At nearly four in the morning, Summer found herself wide awake and in tears, but not due to distressful causes like one would assume. She wasn't in her own bed, instead sitting up in Bucky's while he was in the bathroom, and she was staring at a picture on her phone of her brand-new niece, who had been born only twenty minutes earlier on the other side of the continent.
She was used to missing the births of her brother's kids, but that never really made it any easier. And even if it did, seeing a newborn baby's face was enough to make her cry anyway, so a rush of bittersweet tears were to be expected.
As she heard Bucky open the bathroom door and start to walk out, she got a new picture, this one of Paul and Sarah smiling and leaning in close to one another with the new little girl in Sarah's arms. Summer couldn't help but be in awe of the woman, having just given birth to her seventh child at only thirty-two years old and looking somehow radiant even though she should have looked like she had just been hit by a train.
Summer remembered pregnancy and childbirth like it was yesterday, and she very clearly remembered the distinct feeling of not wanting to ever go through it again for a very, very long time, if ever. Just the idea of seven kids, two of which were twins, and all of that work and lack of sleep and never ending laundry and dishes... how did Sarah even do it, and why?
Then again... Summer knew well why. Something about having the sort of heart that was made for children, and then having a man who made you want to give them to him. Somewhere in certain parts of her head that she wasn't about to acknowledge yet, Summer was finally starting to understand that concept.
"Are you crying?"
Summer blinked and looked up at Bucky, who had just sat on the edge of the bed near her feet, looking at her in slight concern as he put on a pair of boots over black cargo pants that she recognized from the last time she had seen him off on a mission. Instead of the rest of the uniform, for now he wore a white tank top and damp hair from his shower, and Summer didn't let these things distract her for long before she shook her head and replied, "No, I mean, yeah, I'm crying but... it's because of this."
She then held out her phone, which he took as she scooted closer to him so that she could look at the photo with him. "Your brother's baby," Bucky deducted, and Summer nodded as she rested her chin on his shoulder.
"They named her Marina," Summer said. "I haven't decided yet if I hate that name as much as I think I might, but look at how cute she is." She reached forward and zoomed in on the baby's face, for emphasis, and when Bucky chuckled, she asked, "What?"
"Nothing," he insisted, but she wasn't buying it.
"No, seriously, what? Don't you think she's cute?" Summer asked. "You can tell me, I won't be offended or anything."
He shrugged for a moment, looking again at the picture as he said, "I don't know... just kind of... looks like my therapist."
Summer nearly spit on the phone screen with her sudden laugh at that unexpected remark. "Oh my God! Your therapist? I mean, I can see maybe a little bit of old-man face, but that's normal for newborns and look at her nose... it's so tiny and sweet!"
"You asked me to be honest," he shrugged innocently with a grin as she pulled the phone back in front of her and continued to inspect the photo.
"Yes I did," she said, setting her phone down and wiping at the leftover moisture near her eyes. "I guess I just have the typical baby blinders on. Like when David was born. I have no clue if other people genuinely thought he was cute and I didn't care. He could have looked like one of those ugly troll dolls and I still would have thought he was the cutest baby in existence."
"Troll doll?"
"Oh right, you missed those," Summer sighed, sometimes finding it easy to forget how out of place Bucky still was in this century. He had adapted so well and was even getting better at Mario Kart, thanks to David's constant and vigorous "training", so it was easy for little references to slip her mind. "Well anyway, they're hideous little creatures with bright neon hair, and they scared me to death when I was a kid, so Paul would hide them under my pillows and all through my room and laugh when I started screaming."
Bucky smiled and replied, "Sounds like something I would have done, if everything Steve says is true."
"Which I'm sure it is," she replied, reaching out and pushing away a stray wet lock of hair from his forehead. "So... how long now?"
Bucky checked the clock on his nightstand and replied, "We're leaving in twenty minutes."
She signed and nodded. "I know I've said this already, but I'm just saying... since I have to sit here and worry all day and wait for you to get back, I would at least like to get to see you in the uniform, when you're done."
"I know. And I would like for you to get some sleep," he said, leaning in and giving her a soft and short kiss as she groaned a little bit.
"How was I supposed to sleep? My niece was being born and I was getting constant updates, plus I knew you were getting up at three to get ready to leave," she pointed out. "I never had a hope of sleeping tonight."
"But you work later," he replied. "You need to sleep."
She shrugged and replied, "That's what coffee's for."
Bucky just sighed and gave her a look before standing up, needing to get the rest of his things together, and Summer sighed and flopped back on the bed as she opened her phone, texting Paul back as she listened to Bucky walk back and forth about the room, tossing things into his bag.
"You have those protein bars I made you packed, right?" she asked without looking away from the screen.
"Yeah."
"All of them? I know how much you can eat."
"Yes, Summer."
"Okay." After hitting the send button, she paused and then asked, "Is it gonna be cold in D.C.? Because you might need to take a jacket or -"
"Summer. It'll be fine."
She nodded, mostly to herself, and then started typing again before adding, "Make sure you don't forget to drink water in between... you know... beating up bad guys and -"
Then, out of nowhere, her phone was snatched out of her hands and tossed out of her reach on the bed, and she looked up to find Bucky grinning down at her as he lowered himself down on the bed, then climbed on top of her. "I'm fine, Summer. Really."
Then he kissed her, and she closed her eyes with a muffled whine against his lips as she pulled him down, closer, and held him against her with her arms around his neck. After a moment, he took a breath and smiled softly at her as she pulled her thoughts back together after his unexpected interruption of her last-minute checklist. "I know. But I worry. Especially about you." Then her eyes widened slightly and she quickly added, "Not because I think I need to, but because I love you and that means I'm gonna worry like a psycho."
"I know," he replied, still smiling, and she wondered how he could be so at ease when her stomach was in knots for him. Then he kissed her again, and after he said quietly, his lips still grazing hers, "But you need to get some sleep. If you promise me that you will after I leave, then maybe... I can bring you back a surprise."
She raised an eyebrow. "A surprise? Like what? A souvenir? Like a... I don't even know, actually."
He squinted slightly and then shook his head. "No."
"... But then what..."
He kissed her again to silence her, then said, "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise. But you have to sleep first."
She sighed and made a face. "Of course that would be your condition."
"Same as you making sure I'm not hungry or cold," he shrugged.
She nodded faintly, then smiled and kissed him again, not letting him go until his phone across the room starting beeping, making him pull away with a slight groan.
"Is that your cue to go?" she guessed, and he nodded before reluctantly rolling off of her and off of the bed. She sat up and found her phone again, then watched him as he threw on a black long-sleeved shirt and started double checking everything in his bag.
The last time she had seen him off before a mission, she hadn't really known what to do or say. In some ways, she still didn't, especially since he was finally trying again after that disastrous first time. But they were in a much more stable, open place in their relationship now than they were then, and she felt like she knew him in a way she hadn't then. He had come a long way as well, in terms of his memory and personality and just about everything, and she felt like she should say or do something to give him once last push of encouragement before he left. But what?
Her idea came just as he zipped up his bag and shoved his phone into his pocket. She stood and walked over to his dresser, near where he stood, and opened his top drawer, which she knew held what she was looking for. He watched her curiously as she picked up his old dog tags by the chain, then turned towards him before stepping closer and carefully lifting it up towards his head. He bent down slightly to help her, though his expression was still slightly confused, and she quietly explained, "Just think of this as your reminder of who you are under all that leather and metal."
She tucked the tags under his shirt, like they'd be safe there, and he looked at her as he replied, "But I'm not... that. Him. I'm..."
"I know," she nodded understandingly. "But you're also not him." She tapped his left shoulder where the red star was under his sleeve, and she added, "You're you. They're both parts of you. And I love you."
She couldn't think of a better or simpler way to put it, and it seemed to be just enough. His eyes softened and he leaned in to give her one more kiss before he really couldn't stall any longer and had to go.
"I'll be back tonight," he said after breaking the kiss, and she nodded as he picked up his bag and then added pointedly, "Remember. Sleep."
She nodded, rolling her eyes slightly, then following him as he walked to the door. Once they were out in the hallway and reached her door, she lingered there as he briefly paused, turning to tell her goodbye one more time.
"Text me when you get there. And before you start. And after your done. If you can," she said. "I'll be here trying not to drink away my chronic anxiety and go crazy thinking the worst."
He gave her a look, then opened his mouth to say something, but then his phone beeped in his pocket again, and she just sighed and gestured down the hall. "Go."
He nodded, but he gave her one last fleeting kiss before finally actually leaving. She watched him walk away until he disappeared from sight, and then she opened her door and walked inside her room with a heavy sigh. Down the hall, unbeknownst to her, Bucky reached the secured doors to the elevator and closed his eyes as he let the forced lightness on his face drop, finally able to drop his completely relaxed and unworried act now that he didn't have to keep it up for her benefit.
Meanwhile, knowing that she had the whole day ahead of her to worry, Summer wasted no time in curling up in her own bed, next to her peacefully sleeping son, and close her eyes while very different visions and thoughts of babies and super-secret superhero missions danced behind them.
To her shock, she fell asleep within minutes. Her first thought upon waking up four hours later was that she might get that "surprise" after all.
Despite his own natural, unavoidable sense of unease about the mission following what had happened last time, Bucky found that overall, it felt like slipping back into an old routine that he would never really forget. It also helped that he felt considerably more together and stable, overall, than he had back when he had first tried to do this again.
Something else that helped keep the anxiety at bay was how much more comfortable he was with the people he was currently riding in the back of a van with.
"I have never felt more like a sex offender before in my life," Sam remarked as he drove Steve, Natasha, and Bucky through the streets just outside of D.C.. "This thing just screams 'I've got candy, get in'."
"You'll get used to it," Natasha replied, handing Steve and Bucky two tiny comm pieces from her place in the front passenger seat.
Bucky glanced at Steve as they both put the pieces in their ears, and when Steve tested out the connection, Bucky heard a familiar voice reply, "You know, I always wanted to hear Captain America whisper in my ear while I peed out five cups of coffee in the Capitol building."
"Good morning to you too, Stark," Steve replied with an eye-rolling slight smile.
"More like afternoon now. How do you like the van?"
Bucky then glanced towards Sam, who replied after Nat had given him his own piece, "Like I'm about to get my fifteen minutes of fame on Dateline's 'How to Catch a Predator'."
"Perfect. Well, I'll be in touch when it's time. Gotta have a late lunch with the Speaker of the House."
Steve rolled his eyes, and Sam asked, "Is that really what he's doing?"
Natasha nodded, then said, "Rumor has it he's being 'wooed' to run for office."
"Office? What office?" Steve asked in mild horror.
"Any office," she replied. "The general thought is that after the Vice President was caught aiding the President's attempted assassination and HYDRA turned out to be secretly running everything, a good start to rebuilding trust in the government would be electing an Avenger. Maybe they're 'wooing' him and not you because they think you're too old."
Steve rolled his eyes, then said, "I can't see Stark agreeing to that."
"He won't. But he's using it as an excuse to be in the area and also gleam some info. He's probably bugging every inch of the Capitol as we speak."
Bucky's thoughts regarding how truly bizarre the world around him was were interrupted by the soft buzzing of his phone in his pocket. He picked it up and didn't have to read it to know that it was Summer checking up on him again, and indeed, it was.
On my break. Anything exciting happen yet?
Using the only hand that was capable of texting on a touchscreen phone, he replied, Not yet. Few more hours.
Her reply came quickly. Ok. Be careful.
He smiled faintly at her unnecessary reminder, and then sent back, I will. Did you sleep?
Actually yes. A whole four hours.
His smile lingered as he typed his short reply. Good.
Across from him, Steve watched him text and asked, "Ready for tonight?"
Looking up, Bucky nodded quickly. "Yeah."
"I have a good feeling about this," Steve replied. "It'll be better this time."
Bucky hoped Steve was right. His instincts said he was. But the nagging voice in his head that had spent months ridiculing himself following the last mission was still there, and he didn't think that it would leave until this mission was officially a success.
In short, he would feel better when all of this was over and nothing disastrous had happened as a result.
Summer went about her day on autopilot. Drop David off downstairs, where he was quite happy to be reunited with his daycare friends, go back upstairs and wear a happy face at work all day while inside she was chewing her imaginary nails off of her imaginary hands, and then pick David up when it was over, and spend the rest of the day waiting for everyone to get back in one piece.
And that was how she found herself that evening after the sun had set, sitting on the couch and absently playing Mario with David as she watched the clock and checked her phone enough to be officially labeled a crazy person. It wasn't that she truly feared that something terrible would happen to Bucky - he was a lot more durable than the guys he was hunting down - and she was also pretty confident that he wouldn't lose it this time. It was the waiting and the the automatic worrying that was getting to her, and nothing was distracting enough.
"I've been sitting here for like fifteen minutes and I'm pretty sure you haven't even noticed."
Summer nearly jumped off the couch, letting out an undignified squeak as her suddenly wide eyes saw Darcy sitting on the other side of the couch, on David's other side, holding a pint of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. "What the frick! When did you even come in here?"
"Like ten minutes ago," she replied around a mouthful of ice cream. "I said hi and everything and you just kept staring at the TV like Luigi in a flying squirrel suit was the center of your existence."
Summer blinked and then relaxed slowly, sighing as she turned back to the game and muttered, "I am so ready for this day to be over."
"Dude," Darcy pointed out, "you have like nothing to worry about. You're dating a guy who is extremely hard to kill or even hurt, and he's got a robot arm. Plus his best friend is equally indestructible and probably worries about him even more than you do."
"No, I know," Summer said, back to playing robotically. "It's the waiting. It's the worst." Then she paused and added, "It's a good thing I was born in the '80s and not back in his day, because I would have been an absolute wreck when he joined the Army."
"That is so weird," Darcy replied. "I mean, it's a hell of a story, but do you realize how weird that is? If he had some secret love child from the forties, his secret great-grandkids could still be older than you."
Summer made a face and then said, "I really hope he doesn't because that might be creepy."
Before Darcy could answer, Summer heard the doors open across the room, and since Summer knew they couldn't possibly be back yet, she had a brief moment of concern before the visitor ended up just being her boss.
"Hi," Pepper said as the doors closed behind her, looking much more causal in a t shirt and shorts than Summer was used to seeing as she made a beeline for the living room area. "Hope you two don't mind the company."
"Not at all," Darcy said. "Come join our party."
Pepper sighed and sat down in a chair close to the couch, then asked Summer, "Have you heard from them?"
"Like half an hour ago," she replied. "They were about to get started, I think."
Pepper nodded, crossing her arms as she said, "See, I used to be used to this. Then Tony kind of took a break from everything for awhile and now I have to get used to it again."
"You know," Darcy said, eating the last of the ice cream in the pint, "we could all like train and become super badass chicks and go with them so we don't have to sit around here and wait while they do all the work."
"I've had a taste of that," Pepper replied. "It's not all it's cracked up to be. For me, at least."
"... I've shot and tasered a couple of HYDRA people," Summer shrugged. "That's something, right?"
"I love tasers!" Darcy exclaimed. "I tasered Thor after Jane hit him with her car."
Summer then turned to Darcy with wide eyes and asked, "Why in the world would you ever want to taser Thor? Or hit him with a car?!"
In the midst of the thankfully distracting conversation, David took a look around the room and the women within it, then hopped off the couch and, after a moment of searching, returned with two new controllers that he dropped in Pepper's lap first and then Darcy's, before he sat back down on the couch and looked at each of them expectantly.
"Oh," Pepper said, holding the controller backwards. "I haven't played a video game since... well, probably Pac-Man."
"Sweet," Darcy said, setting her empty carton on the coffee table in front of her feet and then hunkering down with her controller. "Everybody pick Pepper up and throw her at the Goombas."
Summer couldn't help but laugh to herself, but she would be lying if she said that playing games with her son and the other women waiting for the return of their own Avengers wasn't highly preferable to sitting there and worrying herself into an early grave.
Outside of D.C., in an otherwise unsuspecting part of Virginia, there was a distinctly non-suspicious barbecue-style restaurant that sat quietly and unassumingly in the middle of an unremarkable strip mall. It was the last sort of place one would expect to find a secret HYDRA facility underneath, but that was the idea, and Bucky was squinting at the building through the scope of his gun as Steve muttered next to him, "Didn't know Nazis liked barbecue."
"Are they still Nazis at this point?" Bucky asked, lowering the gun slightly without taking his gaze off of the building. They were on a rooftop that was close enough for them to jump from on to the roof of the restaurant when the time came.
"Same philosophy," Steve said. "It's kinda shocking how after all this time, nothing's really changed and we're still fighting the same people."
Shocking and incredibly depressing, but Bucky wasn't about to say that. He looked through the scope one more time just as the lights in the building went out, signaling the start of the action.
"Get ready," Steve said quietly as the customers started deserting the place one by one, using their phones as lights. Once the last one had left, Natasha gave them the all-clear over the comm, and after that, the weeks of planning and prepping for this mission culminated in about seven minutes that felt like even less time once they began.
While Nat and Sam went in through the front door, unseen thanks to the darkness, Steve and Bucky jumped and landed unnaturally quietly on the roof, then quickly made their way to a glass portion of it.
"So, Jack and Ennis," Tony's voice said into their ears, "are you on the rooftop yet?"
"Yes," Steve replied. "What did you call us?"
"Well I caught fifteen minutes of Brokeback Mountain the other day and it reminded me of you two," Tony said. "I'm just kidding. Maybe. All right, so, directly underneath your feet is the kitchen, plus three guys who are guarding the entrance to their lair underneath the place. Looks like you get there through the freezer. Should feel right at home."
Bucky gave Steve an annoyed look that Steve returned with full sincerity just before Bucky punched a hole through the glass. Steve went to jump in first but Bucky beat him to it, and after their feet were back on the ground and in the almost-pitch black, in a matter of seconds, thanks to Tony's direction and their skills, the men were unconscious on the floor, before any of them had the chance to fire a single bullet.
Then Natasha and Sam arrived, just as a generator kicked in and the lights went back on over their heads. "Front end's secure," Nat said, briefly eyeing the knocked-out men on the floor. "They didn't hit the panic button."
"Good," Steve said, turning and heading towards the freezer. "Let's go."
Following closely behind with his gun ready, Bucky followed Steve into the freezer, not blinking at the sudden rush of cold as Tony directed them to the part of the wall behind some heavy boxes of product that would lead to the secret underground HYDRA "cave". Steve found the catch in the wall, but when he pulled the hidden door open, it revealed yet another door, this one far more secure and high tech, requiring a retinal scan for entrance.
"On it," Sam immediately muttered before grabbing one of men off of the floor and dragging them to the door, then pulling an eyelid open and successfully unlocking the door.
After that, it was no slow, creeping descent down the stairs. The men underground knew full well that they were there, and as soon as the door flashed green and opened, shots were being fired and a brief spat of chaos erupted.
The first two shooters were felled by their own bullets ricocheting off of Steve's shield and hitting them, and they took one other man down with him as their bodies tumbled down the stairs. More men were only a second behind, and as Bucky took cover behind a stack of frozen food boxes that reached the ceiling, he returned fire and sent one man to join the others at the bottom of the stairs. Steve was busy taking on three men at once, and just as Bucky shot one of them, Natasha tried to give Sam a hand with his own guy only to take a hit to the face and get knocked back towards the stairs. Bucky tried to get a clear shot at her attacker, but they were moving too quickly, and when she kicked the man down the stairs, he grabbed her and took her with him.
Steve saw it happen and called her name, but being choked by one man while breaking the arm of another, he couldn't quite get to her, so Bucky got up and ran to the door instead. What he saw almost made him laugh - Natasha was essentially surfing down the stairs using the man's body as a makeshift board, shooting others as she went, and then flipping into the air to avoid crashing into the ground when they hit the bottom of the stairs.
Behind him, Steve had taken care of the remaining men, so Bucky headed down the stairs next, helping her return fire to the men scrambling about. The space was large and narrow, looking like a cross between an office and a lab, and Bucky noticed one shooter taking aim at Natasha from behind a desk as she shot in the opposite direction. Just as the man started to pull the trigger, Bucky fired a bullet that hit the man directly between the eyes, and Natasha turned and looked just in time to see the man crumple to the floor.
She looked over her shoulder and blinked when she saw Bucky standing behind her. "Thanks."
Before he could answer, there was an explosion to their left, and they both whipped around in time to see a man in a gray suit start racing through the hole in the wall that he had just created.
"That's him," Natasha said. "Johnson."
Stuart Johnson was the known ex-HYDRA operative whose movements they had tracked over the last two months and led them to this place, revealing it to be a sort of hub for the pushed-underground organization. He was the highest ranked operative that they were aware of who was present tonight, one of the men that they had determined as the architects of the attack on the tower, and his capture was one of their primary objectives.
And since Steve was still upstairs, that meant Bucky got to chase after him as he fled.
He started running without a second thought, straight into the hole in the wall that apparently led into an emergency escape route. Natasha took care of a few remaining shooters who tried to fire at him on the way, and once he was inside the tunnel, overtaking the man was beyond easy - even for an average man, Johnson was not a very fast runner.
As Bucky closed the distance, Johnson turned once and fired a few shots that Bucky's left arm flew up to deflect. Two of them bounced off, but a third shattered on impact and shrapnel managed to slide between the plates of his arm, which was something he did not care about nor notice as he got within grabbing distance of the man.
Bucky caught him by the back of his suit jacket and shoved him down to the ground, then turned him over on his back and kicked the gun out of his hand. Johnson's eyes then widened with recognition, and he gasped as he coughed from the impact of being slammed to the ground, "Not even bothering with the mask anymore?"
Bucky had been prepared for this. Planning to fully ignore whatever came flying out of this guy's mouth, he went to drag the man to his feet only to pause when he added, "I always told Pierce he should get rid of you."
He narrowed his eyes but still refused to otherwise acknowledge the man, who went on to say, "One time I watched you kill an entire team of men after a mission, men who were there to help you and extract you. You just ripped them apart like a rabid dog until Pierce used your shut down code."
A dull ache starting to throb in his head, Bucky narrowed his eyes further and fought to keep the sudden sense of impending panic at bay. He had no memory of this event, no idea what a shut down code was, and his lack of knowledge regarding either thing was enough to make his head start immediately hurting. But then he stopped, took a breath, and realized what this man was doing.
He looked terrified, and he was still gasping for air, despite his tough talk. What was a HYDRA operative with no hope of a fighting chance to do when the Winter Soldier had just captured him and was holding him down to the ground in the middle of a tunnel? Clearly, the answer was to verbally induce confusion and maybe a panic attack or flashback, then try to make a run for it first chance he got.
"You're still that thing," Johnson said, voice trembling even more. "There's still codes that can either shut you down or restart you and -"
Before he could say another word, Johnson took a metal fist to the face and then promptly passed out. Bucky stood up, briefly glanced around the tunnel, then picked the man up, tossed him over his shoulder, and started heading back, feeling the pain in his head start to diminish as he refocused on the mission at hand, half of which was completed now that Johnson was in their custody.
When he emerged from the tunnel, everything seemed calm and Steve looked as if he had been just about to come after him. A number of men were tied up on the floor, even more knocked out, and Natasha rolled out a chair as she said, "Put him here."
He plopped the unconscious man into the chair, then shared a look with Steve as he took a deep breath just before Steve patted his shoulder. "Good job."
Bucky nodded, and then Steve and Sam went about restraining the man while Natasha began the second phase of the mission, which was recovering all of the data from their systems that she could.
It took him a moment to truly grasp how significant the last seven minutes of his life had been, but all he had to do was briefly recall the last mission to see how truly far he had come. Last time, Natasha had to step in and try to neutralize him when a flashback had pushed him over the edge and resulted in him killing their best source of information. He had then thrown her into a table and punched Steve in the face before fleeing in a state of confusion and distress.
But tonight, he had saved Natasha's life and prevented their target from fleeing without inflicting any serious injury, despite that man's purposeful attempted psychological manipulation. He hadn't lost it. He didn't feel like he was about to lose it. When he had felt that familiar prickle of panic in the back of his mind, brought on by Johnson's words, he had been able to push it away and remain present, remain focused, and that was something that he would not have been able to do before.
It had been a long time coming, but for the first time, he finally felt like he had the upper hand, like he had truly seized some of the control back from the ghosts and the voices that had previously dictated his every move and haunted his every day. To be sure, he still had a long way to go, but this was exactly the success that he needed to keep going and keep pushing himself to do better and get better.
It was obvious just by glancing at Steve that he recognized the significance of it all and was just as encouraged by it. Even Natasha seemed rather pleased. Bucky's therapist would be thrilled when he heard about this he next day.
He could think of one other person who would be even happier.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief, Summer set her phone down and sighed, "They're on their way back."
"Oh thank God," Pepper replied, sinking into her chair the same way that Summer was in the couch. "So everything went well? I'll kill Tony for not calling me right away."
"It sounds like everything went well," Summer said, quickly typing out a response and sending it. "How are they getting back? Do you know?"
"Tony's bringing them back on the jet, so they should be back soon," Pepper said, getting out her phone to call Tony.
"See? Now that wasn't so bad," Darcy said, gesturing to the two women poring over their phones now, much to David's disapproval. "Maybe I'm just used to it since it seems like all the awesome stuff happens when I'm not there."
Summer muttered a noncommittal noise in reply, then sent her third text in a row, which consisted of, So... surprise?
She had to wait five long minutes before he replied, first answering her first message. I'm fine, everybody's fine. And you'll get it.
She smiled to herself, quickly typing back, Good. Hint?
His reply came swiftly and was to the point. Nope.
She grinned more and tried to pester him into relenting and giving a hint, but he stopped answering, and she assumed it was due to being on the jet.
Waiting for him to come back now that she knew all was well and had some kind of surprise for her ended up being almost the hardest part of the whole day, albeit much more pleasant than the other parts had been. It got late and David got sleepy, so she busied herself with getting him to bed while she felt herself get less and less tired the later it got. She got a text just as David fell into an easy sleep, telling her that the jet had landed and they'd be back at the tower soon.
She couldn't wait to hear all about what had happened, or at least the parts that she was allowed to know for safety purposes, and just the idea that Bucky had gotten through the mission okay was enough to make her almost giddy with joy. It was something he needed, and she knew that.
She had a feeling that she would end up in bed rather soon once Bucky got back, so she changed into a tank top and shorts and then headed back out to wait in the living room. She didn't end up waiting for long.
She was grabbing a soda out of the fridge when the telltale sounds of the door unlocking and opening caught her attention, and she snapped her head up and made Darcy laugh by how fast she literally threw the soda back into the fridge and then all but ran out of the kitchen.
And since Bucky was the first one inside, she got to see her "surprise" right away. She couldn't help but break out into a smile and blush instantly at the sight of him, still in his full uniform, a hint of a smirk on his face as he walked to her with all of the swagger of someone who had just taken a few of the ghosts of his past and punched them in the face.
"Oh come on. That's not even fair," Darcy remarked as she peeked over the back of the couch, and it only made Summer smile more.
"Surprise," he said quietly as he reached her, and she actually giggled as he gave her a short but promising kiss.
She threw her arms around him before he could pull away, pulling him into a tight hug as she asked, "Are you hurt at all? Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm fine," he assured her as he pulled away, and before he could answer her other questions, Steve walked by - notably not in uniform, like everyone else - and answered for him.
"What happened was everything we wanted to happen," Steve told her with a smile. "And he did great."
She smiled at Steve and then turned back to Bucky, trying to hold back her inner urge to start gushing over how proud of him she was, not wanting to overwhelm him or look ridiculous in front of everyone else. She watched him smile back at her, then trail his eyes down briefly before quickly looking back up at her eyes, but she knew how to read him quite well by now, and she had to stifle a laugh over the fact that he had come back from a mission like... this.
Meanwhile, across the room, Tony was explaining to a relieved but annoyed Pepper that he had been sitting on his jet with just his Iron Man headgear on during the entire mission and was never in any real danger to begin with, and Natasha was directing Steve to go to her room where "the real work" would begin - and she didn't mean anything clever by that, either. Sam was already planted on the couch next to Darcy, and Summer was just about to suggest to Bucky that they retreat to his room just before Steve walked by again and told him, "I'll let you know what we find tonight."
Bucky nodded, and Summer turned to Steve as she asked, "Did you catch the guy who planned the attack here?"
"Yeah," Steve replied. "Well, we caught the guy we think was mainly behind it, but the main thing is now we have a good chance of figuring out who's supporting them and where else they are."
Summer nodded, briefly glancing up at Bucky when she felt his hand start playing with the ends of her hair behind her back, and at the unexpectedly pointed way that he was looking at her, she looked away and forced herself to focus on Steve as he spoke. It was nearly impossible, considering what Bucky was currently wearing and how she could feel his gaze on her.
"And Bucky," Steve gestured with a smile, "caught the guy before he could get away. He also..."
Summer was thrilled to hear the play by play and beyond thrilled to hear the key roles that Bucky had played in the mission, but it was incredibly hard to pay full attention to what Steve was saying when Bucky's hand had left her hair to wander down her back, lower and lower until he shamelessly grabbed her backside through her shorts. She jumped and then looked at him in slight alarm, and he looked completely unapologetic, though he drew his hand back before anyone else could notice his... unusual handsiness.
"... So now me and Nat, and hopefully Tony, are gonna start digging through the files we recovered," Steve said, looking back at them after having looked away at just the right moment. "This part always takes the longest."
Summer nodded, feeling Bucky's hand entwine with hers, and though it was an innocent touch, the way that he subtly yanked at it told her how impatient he was getting.
"Anyway, I'll see you both later," Steve said, glancing at Bucky and raising his eyebrows knowingly before turning to head towards Nat's room.
As soon as Steve left, Summer looked up at Bucky fully intending to ask him what the heck had gotten into him, not that she minded, but before she could so much as breathe he leaned in and growled low enough for only her to hear, "My room. Now."
She couldn't agree more, blushing all over again as he turned her around and then gave her a slight push towards his room. She glanced back at him a few times as she walked there as quickly as she could, unable to get the grin off of her face, especially once she reached for his door only for him to cut her off and throw it open himself. He yanked her inside and then slammed the door shut, turning on the light and then locking the door before turning to face her with unabashedly hungry eyes.
She could do hardly anything but gape and stare at him, his intimidating figure covered in leather everywhere but his left arm, surely the picture of terror to some but to her, the picture of something else entirely. But she only had a moment to stare and ponder these things, because in the blink of an eye he had grabbed her and kissed her with all of the pent up fury she had seen in his eyes while Steve had been talking to her. Suddenly they were tumbling about, crashing into the wall first and then his dresser, which he held her against as his mouth ravaged hers and her hands searched through the leather on his chest for something, anything, to hold on to. She managed to find what she was looking for in the holsters on his shoulders, and as she grabbed on to them, he picked her up and set her on top of the dresser, breaking their kiss long enough for her to gasp and ask, "What is this? Not that I'm complaining, but is it like leftover adrenaline or -"
He nodded, pulling her to the very edge of the dresser so that she was pressed against him fully, and he growled between hard kisses to her neck, "The whole way back, all I could think about was coming back here and what I'd do to you once I got you alone."
She closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath, then as he kissed further down her neck, let one of her hands move to his hair as she asked, "... Really? After beating up a bunch of bad guys, this is what you wanted to do?"
Then he pulled away from her neck and met her gaze, and in his eyes she could see it all, the relief that he felt at the mission having been a success, the leftover energy and adrenaline that he needed to burn off, and underneath all of that franticness, the love that she would never take for granted seeing there.
In that brief quiet moment, she brought her hands to his face and softly held it as she told him something that she needed to say. "I am incredibly proud of you." His eyes softened, just a little bit, and she added, "You are seriously... the strongest man I've ever known."
She watched him swallow and fail to find words to say back to her, and that was fine, because she had just needed him to know how happy she was that the day had gone as it had and that he had given himself the chance to prove how far he had come.
Before he found a word to say himself, she pulled him close and kissed him, then let her hands drop back to his holsters, where they gripped tightly and pulled until his chest was against hers. He kissed her back a little less crazed than he had a moment ago, but the heat quickly built back up, and she broke away to get a few more words in before he took away her ability to think or speak at all.
"One more thing," she smiled, letting her hands run down his chest, the leather rough on her palms in an entirely pleasant way, "As much as I loved the farm fantasy thing... I think I might love this even more." He grinned in reply, his eyes shifting to reflect what she could only describe as shameless dirtiness, and she added, "Not that I have even the slightest clue how to get any of it off..."
His smile grew just before he kissed her again, and then as she squealed a little in surprise, he picked her back up and turned them around, carrying her to his bed and then gently tossing her into it as she took a moment to mentally photograph what he looked like as he kneeled on the bed, moving towards her. His face was the picture of many things, love, nearly overwhelming lust, affection, all of that lingering adrenaline that was coursing through his veins, while the rest of him might have told a different story to anyone else. She knew that he wasn't fond of the uniform, sheerly due to the staggering number of horrible things that he had done while in it, and that he was willing to wear it here, for her, was ultimately a significant sign of trust that she would never, ever forget.
He kissed her fiercely, but he didn't push her down to her back. Instead, he pulled her to sit up fully as he sat back on his knees, and after he broke the kiss to take a breath, he took one of her hands in his and then guided it to his side, where he showed her how to undo the first part of the uniform. She refused to think about how different this routine must have been for him before, refused to wonder if they had let him dress and undress himself, or if they had taken away that dignity from him too. Instead, she just focused on the mutual trust of the moment, and the way that he looked at her and kissed her as she slowly stripped the suit away. In that moment, the present was all that mattered, and he was home, which meant that she was too.
She was happy to give him something to come home to, and even happier to have given him a home in the first place.
Considerably later, Bucky chuckled breathlessly as the woman lying unmoving in his arms made a high-pitched whining sound, the sort that one might make when they didn't plan on moving for roughly the next week.
For his part, he finally felt calm again, finally able to lay still and simply breathe now that the previously frantic energy had found its outlet. But while he had envisioned simply coming back home and wrecking his room with her help, as always, she had found a way to make it mean so much more in the end. He didn't know how he could possibly be surprised anymore - nothing was ever simply anything with her. It was always more, so much more than he could put into words, and that's where he was lucky - she always had enough words for the both of them, and more often than she realized, the words that were just right.
"Still awake?" he asked, his voice coming out a bit more hoarse than he'd expected.
She stirred slightly in his arms, her cheek stuck to his chest and her hair tangled over her back and within his fingers. "Awake, yeah... also delirious..."
He smiled and brought his free hand to her face, tilting her head back so he could look in her eyes and brush her hair behind her ear. "Sorry."
"You always say that and never mean it," she groaned, stretching out her legs despite being tangled with his, eventually gathering the strength to sit up. He let her hair slip through his fingers as she did, and he shook his head with a slight quirk of his lips at the way she pulled the sheet up over herself just to sit there and comb her fingers through her mess of hair and pull it behind her head. He would never understand her thing with the sheets.
He reached out to her hair and twirled the ends around his fingers, earning lighthearted protests from her as she would then have more to untangle, and after a bit, he gave up and closed his eyes briefly, not quite ready for sleep yet despite his now-relaxed state. Something was nagging at his brain, a long-forgotten habit that he'd once had but now only cared for at select times, and it seemed that this was one of those times.
While Summer continued to fight with her hair, Bucky rolled over towards his nightstand and opened its single drawer, grabbing the same pack of cigarettes from it that Steve had given him months ago in the hopes of smoking jogging a few more of his memories. He hadn't touched them since the first night he had given it a try, but the thought had been back in his head ever since he had read the story Summer wrote him for his birthday, where she had mentioned the smoking as an unexpected but potent turn-on.
He slipped one between his lips and then grabbed the lighter he had stashed inside the pack, and as soon as he flicked it to life, Summer looked behind her in curiosity, and it was with great satisfaction that he watched her jaw drop. The sheet dropped as well, and she didn't even notice, too busy staring at him as he tossed the lighter back into the drawer and inhaled while he took a satisfying look at her chest, then met her gaze.
"First the suit... and now this. You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" she asked, watching in seeming fascination as he blew out one breath, then took another long draw from the cigarette. He simply shrugged, which seemed to outrage her even more, and then he let his eyes drop down her body again as he continued to casually torture her.
Sheet forgotten for the moment, she laid down next to him without taking her eyes off of him once, and he shifted closer to her as she propped her head up on her hand and said, "I could seriously watch you do this all day. Not that I want you to do it all day, because it could probably still give even you cancer, but still..."
He turned on his side, mirroring her, cigarette between his fingers as he blew smoke out aimed away from her face, and with a curious gleam in his eyes, he held the thing between them and looked at her questioningly. She looked down at it, then back at him as she smiled nervously.
"Uh..."
"Just once," he said quietly, lifting it closer to her lips, and she blushed like he was asking her to do something seriously scandalous.
She seemed torn for a moment before her eyes met his, and then she gave in with a chuckled, "Fine."
Then he shifted closer slightly, and she watched him carefully as he watched her while she parted her lips slightly, just before he gently placed the cigarette between them. He never let go of it fully, and she kept her eyes locked with his until she actually puffed the thing, at which point she immediately began coughing and sputtering. He couldn't help but laugh, switching the cigarette to his free hand so that he could rub her back while she kept coughing.
"I'm sorry," he smiled as she looked up at him briefly before coughing again. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said, finally getting the last couple coughs out, "but that is awful. Just awful. How do you enjoy that?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Just because it's familiar, I guess."
"Well... I guess I'll just be happy watching, then," she conceded. "Because watching you do it is a million times better than that."
He grinned and then couldn't help but point out, "I'm pretty sure you didn't even inhale."
"... Well, even more reason then," she replied, widening her eyes for emphasis as she laid back down and went back to watching him. "Guess I wouldn't have cut it as a glamorous lady back in your day smoking cigarettes in those long things they used to stick them in."
He just gave her a look and replied, "You would have been just as perfect as you are now."
She gave him a look back that she always did when he made remarks like that, a cross between disbelief and delight, and she came back with, "... Except I would probably be dead by now, so..."
He smiled and shook his head a little, then rolled over to put out the rest of his cigarette on the closest thing he had to an ashtray, which was an empty cup, and then he turned back over to pull her back into his arms and kiss her as he started to feel the familiar pull of sleep tickle the back of his eyelids.
OOO
Meanwhile, back in Natasha's room, she was sitting at her desk running through a scan of the first set of files that she had retrieved earlier that night, while Steve watched and tried to learn from her about the finer points of the technological side of what they did and Tony lounged in a chair while JARVIS did his portion of the work for him. So far, she hadn't gotten much of a chance to see if they had any good intelligence in their possession, but something had caught her eye as she had watched the files speed through the decryption process - a few video files, which was relatively unusual for this sort of thing.
While Steve and Tony began bickering about something that she wasn't paying attention to, Natasha located the first video file and then played it. Within the first few seconds, her eyes widened slightly and she hit the pause button.
"Steve."
"Yeah?" he asked, ignoring Tony with a burdened sigh.
"... You're gonna need to see this."
"I thought you were tired," Bucky murmured with a slight grin as Summer nipped at his neck, sliding on top of him beneath the sheets and preventing him from falling asleep quite yet.
"I was," she said, lifting her head and smiling as she looked down at him, "but then you started smoking and you know what that does to me."
Then she kissed him, lazily and sweetly but with a clear intent, and he was content to lie back and watch her do with him what she would, but the noisy buzzing of his phone on the nightstand interrupted them.
"Ignore it," Bucky told her, pulling her back down to him and kissing her briefly before the phone buzzed again and she pulled away, sighing and grabbing the phone before handing it to him.
She sat back above his hips and waited while he opened the text from Steve, frowning as he read it.
Found something in the files. Need you to come and see.
He had an instant sinking feeling as soon as he read those words, something that served to ruin the mood rather quickly and set his phone down as he looked up at Summer and said, "Steve wants me to come and see something."
"Oh. Okay," she said, looking only a little disappointed as she moved off of him, sitting down next to where he had laid as he reluctantly got up from the bed. Still feeling like whatever it was Steve wanted him to see, it couldn't possibly be good, Bucky got dressed quickly and then glanced back to Summer as she pulled her tank top back on and asked quietly, "Should I just... stay here, or..."
Bucky shrugged, not really thinking much of it as he replied, "It probably won't take long. Just come with me."
"Okay," she agreed, and then a few moments later, he was leading her out of his room and down the hall, where the door to Nat's room was open and he could hear her and Steve talking softly. When he got there, he peeked inside slowly, seeing a frown on Steve's face and, upon glancing at Tony across the room, sheer boredom on his, but Steve quickly noticed Bucky's arrival and motioned for him to come in. Bucky did, only vaguely noticing how Summer remained near the doorway, unsure of whether she should actually be there or not.
"What did you find?" he asked Steve, looking at the computer Natasha was sitting but seeing nothing revealing on there at first glance.
"When I leaked SHIELD's files to the Internet," Natasha began, "a lot of them got pulled within a day or two. Mostly HYDRA's. Whatever wasn't saved before then by a handful of people just disappeared. I think I just got most of them back, and then some." When Bucky gave her a look that told her that still didn't tell him much, she added, "There's files on you, including at least one video."
Now he understood. He looked from her to Steve, then at the computer as he asked quietly, "... What is it?"
"Nothing you're going to like," Steve replied.
"Have you seen it already?"
Steve shook his head. "Just the first few seconds."
Behind them, Tony had sat up a little straighter, not looking as much like he was about to fall asleep, and though Bucky didn't notice yet, Summer had overhead and now had half her body through the doorway.
"... You don't have to watch it," Steve said, "but I thought maybe..."
"Just play it," Bucky said, eyes fixed on the screen, and as Natasha wheeled her chair around to do so, Tony leaned over the arm of his chair to get a better look himself.
Natasha hit the button, and the first thing Bucky saw was something that he never wanted to see again: himself, sitting in that damned chair they used to take his memories, in some fluorescent-lit room, probably deep in the bowels of one of HYDRA's hideouts. His hair wasn't quite as long as it had been when he had fought Steve the previous year, and the quality of the video was poor enough to give away that it was older. This was confirmed when Alexander Pierce entered the frame, looking visibly younger as he began speaking.
Suddenly, Bucky realized that Summer was now inside the room, and staring at the computer with visible horror in her eyes.
"Turn it off," he blurted to Natasha, who immediately paused it. He then turned to Summer, who snapped her eyes up to his and seemed at a loss for what to say until he gently took her by the arm and led her back towards the doorway, where he half-whispered, "I don't want you to see this."
"Why?" she asked with slightly wide eyes. "I know what they did to you, you've told me before and -"
"I know, but seeing it is different," he replied, his eyes pleading with hers. "I don't want you to... look at me like I know you will if you see it."
"I'm not gonna look at you differently, I promise," she said earnestly. "It's just... I mean, I don't want to see it, but I feel like I kinda need to, you know?" When he remained unconvinced, she sighed and added, "I haven't known you forever like Steve. I've got a lot to catch up on with you and I just... I just want to understand it all, even the horrible stuff."
He still didn't want her to see it, but he realized that there was no real point in fighting her on it. She had trusted him with her past and he knew that he could fully trust her with his, regardless of how much he didn't want to. She already knew the worst of what he had done; at the end of the day, perhaps all this would do would indeed help her to understand it all better.
And so, he relented, nodding to her and then walking back to where he had stood a moment ago, this time with Summer standing next to him as he motioned to Natasha to play it. She did, and the room fell to utter silence as the video ran.
It was five minutes long, and while the sound was slightly muffled and the quality a bit grainy, he could clearly hear what was being said and see what was transpiring. In a scene similar to one that had happened not so long ago, Bucky sat there post-mission, confusion evident on his blank face as he mumbled to himself over and over, too low to understand at first. Then Pierce came and sat down on a stool in front of him.
"You only completed half of your mission," Pierce pointed out, and the sound of his voice ceased Bucky's mumbles. "But, luckily, the primary target died from his injuries."
With lost, fearful, confused eyes, Bucky stared at the man for a moment before saying, "Howard Stark."
Tony shot out of his chair so fast it nearly toppled over. Natasha's hand hovered near the pause button as she looked up at Bucky and then Tony, but a look from Steve stopped her from turning it off.
The pain in Bucky's head was coming back. The scene in the video felt more and more familiar, and he knew that in just seconds he would remember it for himself, and he didn't want to. The memory of killing Tony's parents was one that he had hoped he would never recover, but now, to his horror, that was exactly what he was doing.
Back on the screen, which Tony's glare was burning a hole through, Pierce replied to Bucky with, "That was your primary target. You hesitated."
"I knew him," came Bucky's quiet, almost broken reply. "He was... different. Older. but... I knew him."
"I want you to listen to yourself," Pierce said, a false sense of gentleness to his tone. "Stark was seventy-four years old. How could you have known him when he was younger?"
Back in the present, Bucky watched his younger self's face twist slightly, confusion growing, and he could almost feel the pain that must have been throbbing in his head, trying to remember why and how he had known Howard, how it could have even been possible when he was seemingly so much younger than Howard. The most sickening thing was how he looked to Pierce for guidance, as if he trusted him to tell the truth and take away the confusion.
"Remember what I told you," Pierce said. "You were a soldier. You served your country. But you had an accident, and now your memory isn't what it was. You need to trust me on this. Sometimes you might think you recognize someone, but you don't."
"But I did," Bucky argued.
Then someone else entered the frame, a man in a suit that Bucky didn't recognize. He told Pierce that this approach would never work, but Pierce waved him off, then turned back to Bucky and said, "You didn't."
On the monitors surrounding Bucky, the numbers had begun to rise and beep noisily in the video. His inner panic was growing, confusion reaching a critical point, and Pierce said, "If you don't calm down and listen to me, you won't like what happens next. You have to cooperate."
He seemed to snap then, fists clenching and eyes losing their blankness as a wild gleam took over, and then Pierce made a motion with his hands. A team of armed men descended, and chaos erupted for one very short moment. Bucky, in his confused, cornered state, snapped one man's neck and punched another so hard he went flying into the wall off-screen, but it was an ultimately pointless battle, as the remaining men shoved him down and the restraints on the chair rose up and locked him in place. He fought them with everything he had, trying to rip himself free of the restraints, all but howling with the effort of it, all while Pierce merely stood up and slipped his hands into his pockets, sighed, and then muttered "Start over," with all of the annoyance of someone who had ordered a meal only to receive it wrongly made and have to send it back to be fixed.
He fought the rest of the process every inch of the way. Two men had to hold his head still while another tried to shove a bite guard in his mouth, and at one point he bit the man - quite savagely, if the blood dripping from the man's hand was any indication - and then another had to take over.
But there was no stopping it, and when the halo-like contraption fixed itself on his head, there was no pause before it went to work, ripping his memories from his grasp and making him scream in pain, over and over. The video dragged on and on, until the screams eventually stopped and his fists unclenched. The thing detached from his hand and retracted back into the air, while he laid there unmoving, eyes closed and unconscious, seemingly forever at the mercy of the men who controlled him.
And then, the video was over.
Feeling suddenly sick to his stomach, Bucky stared at the blank screen for a long moment. He wished that he hadn't watched it. He wished that nobody had ever found it. His brain was working through what he had just seen, trying to fill the holes within his memory and bring something to the surface that he wanted to stay buried, but there was no fighting it.
First he looked at Summer, who was still staring at the computer screen herself, arms crossed over her chest and visibly trying not to cry, but he could see that the tears were falling anyway. The only other time he had ever seen her look so devastated and horrified was when David's life had been seconds away from being lost.
Natasha had nothing to say, no words of wit, nothing but her own subtly horrified and silent, but not surprised, expression. Behind her, Steve was not crying or staring in horror, as Bucky might have expected. Instead, he looked utterly murderous. He wasn't sure that he had ever seen Steve look so angry.
But Bucky's mistake was daring to glance at Tony, who was the single most shocked person in the room. The minute Bucky looked at him, all he could see was Howard's face, and the memory that had been floating to the surface finally broke through.
The night was dark, rainy, and cold, and the routine was the same: complete mission, report back to headquarters, wait for further instructions. He stood in the middle of a winding road, weapon ready, calmly awaiting the two headlights that would signal the arrival of his target.
When they arrived, and when he saw the lights of the car, he didn't move. He didn't fire a single shot. He didn't need to, because as soon as the lights illuminated his dark figure standing there directly in the path of the car, it swerved to miss him and went off the road, then crashed into a tree.
As smoke rose from the crunched hood of the car, he walked almost causally slowly towards the wreckage, going for the passenger side first. Once there, he shoved his metal fist through the window, shattering it, and then snapped the neck of a woman without so much as looking before moving on to the driver's side, where the window was already shattered and the door was dangling off at one corner.
He tore the door off all the way, then grasped the neck of his bleeding primary target, dragging him halfway out of the car and putting a pistol to his head. The older man coughed, cried out in pain, and then opened his eyes just as Bucky was about to pull the trigger.
He would have shot him right then if the man's eyes hadn't widened in what looked a lot like... recognition. But that couldn't be right.
"B-... Barnes?"
The man was in shock, incredulous, staring like he was looking at a ghost, an impossible ghost. Bucky's finger on the trigger loosened, and he stared back with wide, confused eyes.
"How are you... how..."
He didn't know why he was hesitating, listening to this man mumble nonsensically. Bucky tightened his grip on the gun and shoved it at his target's temple.
"Bucky," the man gasped. "I don't know how it's you but... you know me, Bucky..."
The man then sputtered and coughed up a mouthful of blood, and Bucky dropped the gun to his side as sudden familiarity flashed in his mind's eye.
This man seemed to know him, and had called him by a name, an actual name. Was that really his name? Did he really have one? He didn't think he had one...
But in the end, it meant nothing. The man took his last breath right then, injured severely enough from the the wreck itself to die without the aid of a bullet. Bucky stared at the seemingly familiar face before he snapped out of it, shoved the now-limp body back into the car, and then looked down at the blood covering his hands as one question swirled through his now-aching, confused mind.
Did he really know him?
As the memory faded, Bucky stifled what would have been a loud gasp and opened his eyes. He wasn't standing anymore, to his slight confusion, but was sitting in the seat that Steve had previously been in. Summer was on one side of him and Steve was on the other, both looking at him in concern as he made his way back to the present.
Across the room, Tony had not budged from where he had stood, and he was staring at Bucky with the same stunned, almost blank expression, like Tony was seeing him for the first time and suddenly understood far more than he ever had before.
"You okay?" Steve asked quietly, and Bucky nodded, though he wasn't sure if he really was.
Sometimes the flashbacks brought with them flickers of madness, anger that he couldn't control and sometimes utter despair, but some, like this, brought mostly a deep sense of pure sadness.
He couldn't remember much of Howard from back when he had known him, but there were occasional flashes of the man. Yet now, his clearest memory of him was of murdering his wife and causing his death, and of his last words being Bucky's name.
He didn't resent the concern of Steve and Summer, not in the least, but his need to get away from everyone in the room was eclipsing everything else. He got up from the chair, mumbled something even he wasn't sure of, and then headed straight for the door.
But something made him stop just before he would have passed Tony. He met the other man's still-stunned gaze, and before he could stop himself or think over what he was about to say, he blurted shakily, "I'm sorry." Then he bolted before Tony could so much as blink in reply.
He went to his room on autopilot, where he closed the door and then slid down against it, sitting on the floor and staring into space as he slowly came to grips with what he had seen and what it had triggered within his memory.
As much as he wanted to wish it all away, to forget it all and shove the memory back into the deep, dark pits that lay beneath his consciousness, he knew that he could not. He could not gain the good memories without also taking the bad.
If only the bad wasn't so utterly, unthinkably, shamefully horrible.
"Pierce said he hesitated. He said that, right?"
It was the first thing Tony said after Bucky had left the room. Summer looked up from the floor, still trying to mentally work through what she had seen, and her eyes flickered to Steve as he looked at Tony and replied, "Yes. He said that."
The slight edge in Steve's tone took Summer by surprise. It looked like it had surprised Tony too.
"Do you understand now what I've been telling you since the start of all this?" Steve asked, gesturing to the computer.
Natasha looked back and forth between the two men before quietly saying, "Steve..."
"He didn't kill Howard," Steve said. "You don't blame a gun for killing someone, you blame the person that shot it."
"Yeah, kinda get that now, thanks," Tony replied, eyes still wide with horror. "Actually, I always got it, to a point - why do you think I've been letting him stay here, at my own risk? One call to the FBI and I'm in the slammer for harboring a fugitive."
"But you've never stopped blaming him," Steve said, and Summer was pretty sure that Steve wasn't actually angry at Tony, but rather using him to get out his anger that was really aimed at someone who was dead and gone. "And you make your little smart-aleck comments and treat him like he's a loose cannon about to go off at any minute when all he's done is prove himself, over and over, especially today and when he saved Pepper's life, and -"
"I'm sorry," Tony squinted and shook his head, "what are we even arguing about? I'm just as horrified as anybody else would be after what we just saw."
"Are you?" Steve asked. "Because he'll never say it out loud but he's never gonna forgive himself until you forgive him first."
"And I'm never gonna look at him and not see my mom and dad laying in their coffins," Tony retorted, matching Steve's raised tone of voice and yelling back at him. "Would you honestly be any different if it was you?"
"You're damn right I would be different because -"
"Oh my God, stop!"
Summer had honestly thought that she had said it in her head, but apparently she had said it out loud, because now everybody was staring at her and the room was dead quiet again.
Well, so long as she had the floor...
"You're not actually mad at him," she said to Steve regarding Tony, "and you might not be any different if you were in his shoes."
"Thank you," Tony said, gesturing to Summer, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes.
"I think we're all biased one way or another," Summer muttered. "But it's pretty obvious to anyone, after that, who the real monsters are. I might be just a civilian who knows nothing about any of this, but... I know that."
Then the room fell quiet again, and Summer was just about to leave and go check on Bucky when Tony asked nobody in particular, "How can he walk and talk and... function after... that? I mean, that happened over and over, right?"
"He didn't function at first," Summer replied. "It took him awhile before he could even eat."
"He gonna lose it now?" Tony asked.
"I don't think so, but I should probably go and... check on him," she said, glancing at Steve one more time and finding some of the anger gone from his face now. He met her gaze and nodded faintly, and she then left the room, hoping there would be no more pointless fighting after she left.
As much as she had prepared herself for what the video would contain, there was really no way to fully prepare for what she had seen. It was one thing to imagine something, to hear it described in words, but it was another entirely to see it with your own eyes, to hear one of the people you loved most in the world scream in pain and terror as other people hurt them and stripped away their very identity. It hurt, it pissed her off, and it would haunt her for the rest of her days. It was like a glimpse into his nightmares, except it had been a real moment of his life, and it was horrifying in a way that mere words could never be.
Now she walked to his door, and after only a second's hesitation, she knocked on it softly. She didn't get a reply at all, but she thought she heard shuffling near the door, so she slowly opened it and peeked inside.
She found him sitting against the wall next to the door, staring ahead of him, and she gently closed the door behind her after she walked inside. Then she knelt down in front of him, looking him in the eye and seeing the far-away look in them, but no loss of control or anything that made her fear that he would, in Tony's words, "lose it". He was still there. He was just trying to deal with it all.
"Come on," she said quietly, taking his left hand in hers and slowly standing up. It took him a moment but he eventually looked up at her, then let her help pull him to his feet and lead him to his bed.
She got in first, then pulled him down to lay with her. He didn't a say a word and followed her cues without a second thought, letting her hold him so that his head was on her chest and her fingers were gently and soothingly brushing through his hair. His arm was curled along her side, holding her as closely as he could.
"You remembered, didn't you?" Summer asked quietly. She felt him nod against her, and she closed her eyes as she replied, "I'm sorry."
The room was quiet, save for the sound of his rhythmic breathing against her chest and the rustle of her fingertips in his hair, at least until he muttered, "I wish you hadn't seen it."
"I wish it hadn't happened to you," she replied.
But, neither thing could be undone, and there wasn't a thing either one of them could do about it. She wouldn't change having watched the video, however. As heart-wrenching as it was, it was a part of his history, and she wasn't here to just share the good times with him. The bad times, which he'd had more than anyone's fair share of, couldn't be ignored and shoved away forever.
And the less that he had to deal with those bad things on his own, the better. She'd take it all from him and put it on her own shoulders if she could.
But since she couldn't, this had to suffice - holding him close, almost as if he were a child, and simply being there, reminding him that he wasn't alone anymore and that she understood.
Before, it wouldn't have been enough, and though he would have been grateful and soaked up her affection, he wouldn't have slept. But tonight, after a day full of dizzying ups and downs, she eventually felt his eyelids flutter shut against her skin, and his breathing evened out as he fell asleep. It took her a little longer to fall asleep herself, given that she saw him strapped to that chair and screaming every time she closed her eyes, but with time, she followed him into slumber as well.
For all of the pain and the unwanted memories, it was still progress. He was getting better, and she was understanding him better. For then, that was enough.
A/N: This chapter has been a loooong time coming, and it's an important step that I am quite happy to get out of the way :) I also have to give credit where credit is due for how the Howard Stark situation was dealt with here, and what happened was, Mooka333, who has left this story some seriously amazing reviews in the past and is just freaking amazing (and author of a Bucky/OC story that I adore and all of you should read if you haven't already), and I were talking about various things and she mentioned the Tumblr theory that maybe Bucky didn't fully directly kill Howard but instead was standing in the middle of the road, like when he first tried to kill Nick Fury, and Howard swerved to avoid him and crashed. Talking about that, then discussing the matter with midnightwings96 and her coming up with the flashback idea, turned into what you just read lol. Also, to expand on the Pierce bit, I've always sort of imagined in my head that Bucky was sort of forgotten about by the Soviets (or whoever had "custody" of him last before Pierce, could have been Americans for that matter actually, but purely guessing here lol) after a certain number of decades, and then when Pierce took the helm at HYDRA, he took over as "master" and tried to change how the Winter Soldier was both used and manipulated. Maybe trying a falsely kinder and gentler approach at first, like how I tried to describe above, and then once that didn't work, then he shifted towards the more openly cruel manner we saw in TWS, which, in my opinion, is likely the reason why Bucky just submitted to the torture and mind wiping without even trying to put up a fight. I imagine that over time he fought the process less and less, not wanting to face the consequences, and then became what we saw, which was submissive but clearly terrified. I don't know. I'm just making this up as I go lol, but... that's what I've always thought.
ANYWAY. I apologize for ending the chapter on such a sad note after most of it being pretty upbeat and happy with babies being born and Bucky getting his confidence back in himself, but... yeah. I'm mean like that :) Thank you all as always for being AMAZING and sticking with me week after week :D last week's 35,000 word extravaganza was truly ridiculous lol but you all had a great response to it (to both the chapter and to Fire and Whiskey, which I am still incredibly happy about :D) so THANK YOU all SO MUCH :D This week is another ridiculously long chapter, but we're getting closer to certain parts of the story that I have been looking forward to for a LONG time, so I am excited and definitely urge you all to stick with me :D thanks again and see you all next week :D