A/N. Hello all! Without further ado, the climax of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Enjoy! :D
Chapter Sixteen
"Falcon, status?"
"Engaging."
Tania had one ear tuned to the conversation on comms and and one on her surroundings as she ran for the checkpoint. Her and Sam's conspicuous entrance did not allow for stealth and so she was forced to run on her bad leg.
She burst into a hallway and kept jogging. The helicarrier had surprisingly good signage. A door opened to her right and she whacked a man through the doorway with her staff as she passed.
"Alright, Cap, I'm in," Sam announced.
"You put in the chip?" Tania asked, breathless.
"Uh, never mind. Not in!"
"You okay?"
A beat of silence passed. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."
"Eight minutes, guys," Hill prompted.
"I'm on it," Steve responded.
Tania pushed herself faster.
She skidded to a halt in front of a sign to read it. Through this door (and then some more doors). Right. She shoved it open and came face to face with two agents. She immediately engaged, knocking aside the outstretched arm and spinning before kicking out behind her. Her boot slammed into the first agent's gut and he fell back into his partner. She jumped over them both and kept running.
"Alpha lock," Steve said. He'd inserted his chip. One down.
The door to an important-looking room on the way to the checkpoint was guarded by two agents in heavy military gear. She ran for them both and jumped. She wrapped her legs around the left guard's helmet and grabbed the neck of the guard on the right and twisted. The three of them flipped and she rolled onto the floor much more smoothly than she had in the stairwell. She smiled to herself. Natasha would be proud.
"Falcon, where are you now?"
Tania shot them both with the ICER.
"I had to take a detour."
The door opened and Tania whirled around. A woman with short brown hair swung a knife. Tania leaned to the right to avoid it. The woman stepped forward and swung again. Tania grabbed her wrist and kept her grip tight as she spun underneath the woman's arm. Before Tania could ram the woman with her shoulder and complete the maneuver, the woman hooked her foot behind Tania's left ankle and yanked. The injured leg gave out and the two of them crashed to the floor. The staff clattered away.
"I'm in. Bravo lock."
"Two down. One to go. Tania, status?"
The woman broke free and rolled over the staff, picking it up in the process and holding it in front of her defensively. Tania pushed herself to her feet. "Working on it."
The woman lunged. Tania ducked and the staff swept over her head. While she was low, Tania scissored the woman's knees between both legs and rolled. The woman fell to the floor with a grunt. Tania crawled on top of her and grabbed her staff. For a moment, the two of them struggled for dominance.
The woman gained an ounce of strength and shoved the staff into Tania's chin. Her head snapped back and the staff broke in two. Tania knew that would happen and took advantage of the woman's surprise to yank both batons free and slam them both against the woman's head. She was out cold.
"Six minutes," Hill reminded.
Tania's heart raced. "Almost there!" She could see the door to the navigation room. At that moment, maybe twenty agents came flooding into the hallway on both sides. Tania stood at the centre of a T-shaped corridor with the navigation room down the middle and hostiles on both sides.
"Need any help, Tania?" Asked Sam.
She twirled her batons anxiously. "It would be appreciated."
"On it," Steve answered immediately. "Hey Sam, I'm gonna need a ride."
Taking a deep breath, Tania waited until one of the agents was close enough. Then she spun and swung her batons. The hallway was too narrow to fully use her staff, so batons would have to do.
"Roger. Let me know when you're ready."
She flipped the first man over her shoulder and into the oncoming pile of agents coming at her from behind. They toppled over like bowling pins.
"I just did!"
She pulled out her ICER and fired until she was out of ammo, then she threw it like a projectile. It whacked one female agent in the head and she was out before she was ever in. Tania deflected a punch from a guy on her left and dug her knee into his stomach before shoving the same leg backward into the gut of a woman on her right. Fisting her hands into the left guy's vest, she cried out and forced him into the woman.
Tania bent forward and kicked back with her good leg as high and as hard she could. Her ankle hooked around the back of an agent's neck and she swung him down as her torso swung up. She slammed his face into the ground and landed in a crouch.
"Cap! Cap, come in! Are you okay?"
Steve! What happened to Steve?
A foot landed on her spine and she careened forward. The hallway was a mess of unconscious bodies and she found herself on a tangle of limbs. She rolled out of the way just as a knife came swinging at her throat. Tania pushed herself to her feet and wiped the blood from her chin from earlier.
"Yeah, I'm here." Thank God. "I'm still on the helicarrier. Where are you?"
Tania should have been counting before, but she wasn't. All she knew was that there was now one man left standing and that Tania's back was now to the door she needed to go through. She was tempted to just run through it and slam the door in his face, but he had a projectile and he would never let her get that far.
He threw the knife, as she predicted, and she swatted it away with her baton. He ran at her and jumped, twirling in the air kick her in the head. She ducked and spun underneath him so that he landed with his back to the navigation room door, bouncing on the balls of his feet. This guy must have been a specialist. He looked too young to be an S.O.
"I'm grounded." Tania spun forward, swinging her batons with her. "Suit's down. I'm sorry, Tania." She growled in frustration as both hits were blocked and she had to dodge two more.
"It's okay," she grunted. "I've got this." She leaned back as a foot swiped at the air in front her. While he was still turning she threw her right leg forward and kicked him right in the ass. He stumbled forward into a roll and she followed. While he was still down, she slammed her batons downward. He smoothly twisted out of the way and rose to his knees. He threw a punch which she blocked (ow) and then another one. She, too, was on her knees. She leaned back and caught this punch with her batons before shoving his arm to the side across his torso so that his spine twisted and his back was to her. She brought up one leg and kicked him solidly in the ear. He went down hard, groaning. "Stay down!" She punctuated her words with slap across the face with one baton.
Panting, she pushed herself up, various spots on her body throbbing with pain.
"Falcon?" That was Hill.
"Yeah?"
"Rumlow's headed for the council."
"I'm on it."
She stepped over the nameless agent's body and reached the handle on the door to her destination. A single metal squeak was her only warning, but it was enough. She ducked as a metal arm broke through the wooden door as easily as a piece of paper. She turned and raised her arms, but he was fast. His boot cracked against her sternum and she crashed through the door, landing roughly on a metal walkway.
She blinked away the dust from the splintered door and looked up. The Winter Soldier loomed over her. "Steve, he's here," she breathed.
That seemed to set Bucky off and he stomped forward. She rolled backward over her shoulder and to her feet. She quickly clicked the batons together and spun the staff in front of her. Her thigh might not be burning, but the rest of her limbs were sore and tired and she didn't want to fight him.
"Almost there!"
"Bucky," she said, walking backward. He matched her step for step. "Bucky stop. This isn't you."
Her words had no effect.
"Bucky, you are a good man and a great brother. Not just to Steve. You had three sisters. And a mother and a father. You had a family - a life before Hydra."
Nothing.
"My name is Tania Banks. You don't know me. You've never heard of me. But I know a heck of a lot about you because Steve told me about you. Steve Rogers. You remember him?"
Bucky's metal hand clenched into a fist. She could hear the mechanics of it whirring quietly. She was going to take that as a no.
"Bucky, I have to do this." Wrong thing to say. He pulled out a knife and threw it. She twirled her staff and deflected it while he ran toward her. She spun toward him, continuing the twirling motion with the staff, swinging it over her head and meeting him halfway. Her first hit was blocked by his metal arm. Quick as a whip, he hooked his flesh arm around it and twisted.
Tania stepped up onto the railing and twisted with him, flipping over his shoulder to land on the other side of him. She landed on her feet and wasted on time in ducking underneath her staff so that she was between it and Bucky, pretty much chest to chest with him while all of their hands still held it. She did what the woman agent had done to her earlier and brought her right leg around his left before kicking at the back of his knee. He buckled and fell backward. She leaned over him and jumped, tucking her head in and somersaulting onto the walkway just as Bucky let go of her staff on impact. She turned on her knees and swung at his face. He knocked the staff away and used the railing to yank himself to his feet.
They faced each other again, almost as if they had never moved at all. Tania spun her staff and locked it against her forearm behind her. Bucky stepped forward-
Steve materialized at the doorway and threw his shield. Bucky pivoted, caught it, continued the whirl and threw it right back. Tania swivelled and ran for the checkpoint. She typed in the code with shaking fingers, removing the chip from a pocket in the utility belt-
BANG!
Her torso jerked forward and the arm with the chip fell slack. Her face rammed into the console and her feet tangled together as she went down. Only when she was lying on the walkway did the pain really start to settle in. There was a hole in her shoulder. Two holes, actually. And holy hell.
Fire imploded where the bullet tore through flesh and muscle and the blood did nothing to quell the heat that felt like it was searing her right shoulder. She couldn't breathe for fear of jostling it and she couldn't scream in pain. Her muscles seemed to be screaming for her. The spherical room disappeared and all she saw were camera flashes and sunspots.
Gunshots. Many gunshots. She fought to see past the blinding lights and the fireworks dancing in front of her. She fought to feel anything besides overwhelming pain. It was like a thousand wasps were stinging her shoulder on either side, over and over and over again until her whole arm was numb.
The chip. She had to get the chip.
She blinked furiously. She was on a centre walkway between three catwalks. On the middle one, Steve and Bucky were fighting furiously with each other. She remembered where she was. That was good.
A new wave of pain washed over her and she groaned, her entire body vibrating with the sharpness of a knife stabbing every inch of her skin.
The chip. Where was it? Where was it?
Bucky and Steve flipped over the railing. "No!"
She heard them land harshly on something. More grunts and the sounds of a struggle. Something plastic clattered to the floor. The chip. Steve and Bucky were fighting for it. One of them must have gotten a hold of it when she blacked out for a minute. At least she knew where it was.
She didn't know how much time had passed-
"One minute," said Hill.
Never mind. Time always passed so much slower when one was high on adrenaline. Steve was down at the bottom of the sphere and she was up here. How was he going to get it up here to plug it in? Even though the very thought made her want to cry, she raised her left arm and gripped the railing. Then she hauled herself closer to edge, crying out and smearing blood all over the floor.
She peered over the edge. Steve was on his way up. Maybe he could make it. Then she saw Bucky slowly getting up - reaching for his gun. "Steve!" She cried in warning.
BANG! Steve buckled and fell to one knee.
Her cheeks were hot with tears.
Steve stood and kept going. He jumped and grabbed hold of a bar. If he could just get a little higher-
BANG! One arm slipped and he grunted.
"Steve!" She cried again, reached her left arm down. "Give it to me! Give it to me!"
He looked up. Their eyes met. God, what awful shape they were both in. He reared his arm back and launched the chip her way. It blew past her and landed beside her. She dove for it and crawled back over to the console.
"Thirty seconds!" Came Hill's slightly panicked voice.
She could do this. She was trained by Black Widow and Hawkeye, the best of the best, to be the best that she could be. She'd made it this far and she'd be damned if one bullet was going to stop her from saving millions of lives.
Using her good arm and good leg, she pushed herself up to stand and leaned against the side of the console. She pulled out the targeting chip with a shaking hand.
BANG!
A bullet ripped through her midsection and she jerked again, barely catching herself on the counter.
Fuck this.
She slammed the chip in place and collapsed, rattling the walkway with her weight. The pain was a haze now - a wave of fire and poison throughout her entire body, of which her shoulder and abdomen seemed to be the origins.
Steve clawed his way on top of the walkway to join her, breathing hard. Her own breaths were wet and ragged and blood began to climb up her throat. She choked on it, turning her head to the side in an attempt to let it leak out of the side of her mouth. "Charlie lock," she mumbled somewhat coherently.
The helicarrier began to rumble as Steve army-crawled towards her. She fumbled for his hand with her good one and missed a few times before grasping it. She held it so tightly that she didn't think she'd ever let go.
"Alright, guys, get out of there."
Tania laughed and regretted it immediately, closing her eyes to the immense pain. Her nerves were frayed and she could feel the hole in her stomach and her muscles. She was bleeding all over the place now. She wasn't going anywhere like this.
Steve caught her gaze. He himself had at least two bullet wounds and what looked like a stab wound. She shook her head minutely. He nodded and raised his other wrist to his face. "Fire now."
There was a pause. "But Steve-"
"Do it!" He barked. "Do it now!"
They only had to wait a couple of seconds before the helicarrier started really shaking. Missiles were fired two dozen at a time and the entire vehicle rattled with each hit. The railways and beams above and to the side began to break. One at a time, each walkway detached from the the centre console, falling to the bottom of the sphere. Tania could hear glass shatter.
Bucky yelled in pain.
She locked eyes with Steve. Neither of them were leaving at all, let alone without Bucky. But Steve at least looked mobile enough to stand. She forced her fingers to slacken in his gloved hand. "Go to him," she whispered. "Make him remember. Before we all forget."
His eyes widened and he tightened his grip on her hand. "You're coming with me."
She almost smiled. "I'm not going anywhere."
Steve dragged himself closer. "Wherever I go, I want you with me. We do this together. I'll carry you if I have to."
"Go to him," she repeated.
"I'm not letting you out my sight. Not… not when…" His eyes strayed to her blood-soaked suit.
"You're a… stubborn son of a bitch, you know that?"
He laughed, sniffling as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Come on. Up you get." He shoved his knee underneath him and gathered her in his arms. Then he stood, panting from exertion. She could feel his shield underneath her, slung on his arm, but not much else. She was going numb. "Hold on," he whispered. Then he jumped.
There was air whipping around her and then she was jostled, but she didn't really notice much besides that. He set her down on a square of glass that had yet to break, her back leaning against one of the fallen walkways. Then he stumbled over to Bucky, who was trapped underneath the other walkway. He saw Steve and Tania could see real fear etched into his face. He redoubled his efforts to get free, but he had no leverage with both his arms trapped.
Even while dying, Tania felt more sorry for Bucky than she had ever felt for anyone in her life.
The helicarrier slammed into something and Steve fell with the force of the blow. Sam's voice echoed in her ears, screaming and panicked. "Please tell me you got that chopper in the air!"
"Where are you?" Natasha. She was okay. And they had a chopper.
"41st floor! Northwest corner!"
"We're on it! Stay where you are!"
"NOT AN OPTION!"
No one said anything. "Sam," Tania wheezed. "Sam, are you okay?"
"Fine," came Sam's breathless reply. "Ish. Can't say the same for Rumlow."
"Tania! Where are you?"
Tania smiled. Nat and Sam were safe. That was good. "Still… here."
"What are you doing? Get out of there!"
"Nat…" Tania breathed. "I can't leave him."
"Is Steve hurt?"
She groaned. "Him too. But I meant Bucky."
Steve gave a guttural cry and heaved the walkway into the air. Bucky wriggled free and Steve dropped it.
"Tania, don't be stupid."
"Too late."
What followed was a string of Russian curses.
Steve and Bucky were both breathing hard and clinging to something so that they didn't fall through the holes in the glass sphere. "You know me," Steve stated. Embers flew around them from the destruction to the other parts of the helicarrier. What a horrible time for a symbol of their love to be flying around.
"No I don't!" Bucky screamed and threw a punch that Steve barely managed to block with his shield. Even so, Steve stumbled backward and fell on his ass. But he got back up again.
He always got back up.
"Bucky," he pleaded, "You've known me your whole life."
Bucky looked up, eyes red-rimmed and wide. She saw no recognition there, only fear and confusion, each embedded so deeply inside him that she wondered how she never saw it before.
Bucky lashed out with his metal arm. The force behind the swing sent them both to the floor.
This was painful to watch.
"Your name… is James… Buchanan… Barnes."
"SHUT UP!" Bucky howled, his voice scratching against his vocal chords as he threw another punch. Steve hit the glass again.
Tania sobbed. "Stop. Please, stop."
Bucky looked at her, really looked at her, and saw nothing. She was no one he knew. She was just a woman who knew his name.
Steve ripped off his helmet and stumbled to his feet. "I'm not gonna fight you." He let his beloved shield slip from his arm and fall between the cracks into the river below them. He would mourn that later - if there was a later.
I didn't mean you, you idiot.
"You're my friend."
Bucky pushed himself to his feet and they stared at each other. Tania stared at Bucky, searching, wishing, for some flicker of recognition. Anything. She saw hesitation, but it wasn't enough.
Bucky roared and surged forward, tackling Steve like a football player. No. No. She couldn't let him go out like this. She couldn't let either of them die beating the shit out of each other. She sobbed and began to move.
"YOU'RE MY MISSION!" Metal smashed into flesh and bone repeatedly, punctuated with Bucky's mantra. "YOU'RE! MY! MISSION!"
She flung herself over the beam and landed roughly on her spine. She coughed up more blood. Rolling over, she crawled toward the both of them. "You're confused," she spluttered, but she was pretty sure she went unheard. Bucky was trying to convince himself that Steve was nothing more than a target. But the word "trying" hinted that deep down he knew there was something there.
"Then finish it," Steve whispered. Bucky hesitated, panting, metal fist poised to do just that. "Because I'm with you… til the end of the line." His face was a painting of bruises and mottled flesh and blood.
Bucky's face was hidden behind a curtain of brown hair.
He didn't finish it. But he didn't let go either. He sat there, torn between two extremes: protect the man he was ordered to kill, or kill the man he'd sworn to protect.
A giant piece of the helicarrier came crashing through the bottom of the globe. Tania rolled away and wrapped herself around a metal beam just as the glass beneath her shattered. She looked down.
Steve fell backward toward the ocean, his eyes closed or swollen shut. "NO!" She screamed, eyes glued to the red, white, and blue form losing altitude. All the pain from her shoulder and her stomach disappeared. Her entire world narrowed to a pinprick through which Steve crashed into the potomac. She lost him amidst the debris.
He wasn't dead. People don't die that quickly. He could swim. He could make it. If anyone could survive that fall, Steve could.
His eyes were closed.
She dared not think about it.
Squeezing the tears out of her eyes, Tania looked up and saw Bucky, hanging from a beam like she was, staring wide-eyed at the approaching river. She tried to get a read on him, but he was just a mess of emotions that he didn't know how to deal with.
"Bucky," she croaked.
He looked up.
Her heart hammered in her chest at the possibilities of what that meant. "You could have killed me with one shot." She gulped. "Why didn't you?" If she was going to convince him to save Steve, she needed to get through to him first.
He didn't seem to have an answer. Instead of aiming for her head or her chest, he'd gotten her in the shoulder. It made her drop the chip, but it didn't take her out of the equation like it should've. She should be dead right now. But she wasn't.
He shook his head, expression frozen in panic.
She licked her lips (and tasted blood). Whatever she was going to say, she had to make it good. They didn't have long. "Bucky, you are a good man. You're a war hero. You're a fantastic older brother. And even if nothing I'm saying means anything to you, even if you don't remember anything, please believeme. You don't know me, but you knew him." She nodded at the water. "And he loves you. It doesn't matter if you remember. But you made a promise to him that you'd be there until the end of the line."
He looked away.
"Even if you don't feel like Bucky, you used to be him and that means everything to Steve. Please, if you only do one more thing for him, just please… keep that promise."
Every second that passed, the helicarrier descended toward the river, but Tania couldn't really bring herself to care. Before she died, she was going to get through to Bucky, damn it. Even if just a little bit.
Besides, she reasoned, she'd already drowned once. What was one more time? Faced with the inevitability of falling victim to the very thing that had traumatized her for months, she simply brushed it off. It would happen and she could do nothing to stop it. Acceptance felt much nicer than sheer terror.
Bucky looked back up again, meeting her gaze for what felt like the very first time. He moved his lips as if to say something, but nothing came out. Then: "He loves you."
She sucked in a sharp breath. She hardly dared believe that she or Steve might have made a dent in all that brainwashing. "He loves us both."
The helicarrier hit. The world shuddered and groaned as the weight of the massive vehicle bent and snapped under the pressure. Glass exploded all around them, raining down into the Potomac. Walkways popped apart and creaked as they dropped toward them. All the while, Bucky and Tania never looked away from each other.
Tania's beam cracked in two and she slipped. It wasn't a far drop to the water, but it felt like a lifetime.
It always came back to this, didn't it? Falling. She was always falling. Falling for Steve. Falling from buildings. Falling from the Statue of Liberty. Falling into depression. Falling, falling, falling.
She felt limp and numb as she fell now, staring up at the destruction they'd caused. They did it. They stopped Hydra. They saved all those people. They managed to trigger something in Bucky (she hoped). The world was safe.
She hit the water like it was concrete and blacked out.