His feet carry him straight back to the lab. Tony. Bruce. He needs to show them this. He strides through the long halls – once or twice, an agent jumps out of his way as he storms past. He needs to calm down. He can't.
As he nears the door to the lab, he hears voices – Fury's in there. The anger leaps in his chest, and as the door hisses slowly, too slowly open, he lays a hand on it and shoves it all the way open.
"What is phase two?" Tony's voice falters as Bucky comes into view, but Fury doesn't turn until he's slammed the gun down on the nearest table he finds. No one moves. The silence is thick enough to cut with a knife.
"I think I can answer that," Bucky says, his voice coming out more calm and level than he feels. Fury's gaze travels from the gun to him. He glares coolly back.
"Barnes—" Fury begins, but Bucky only crosses his arms, and the man breaks off.
"You wanna tell me why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to make weapons?" He asks coldly.
"Sergeant, we gathered everything, and I mean everything related to the Tesseract – it does not mean that we're creating weapons."
"Oh, really?" It's Tony speaking now, a hard look in his eyes as he swivels the screen around, showing diagrams of – nukes. "Huh. This looks a little like a weapon to me."
Bucky's gaze flicks immediately back to Fury. "You told me the world changed."
Now there's a spark in Fury's eye. "If you're comparing us—"
"Oh, no. Seems to me like you're making all the comparisons yourself," Bucky replies sharply. The Hydra insignia gleams on the table as if to prove his point.
Another door in the lab opens, and Romanoff steps in, shadowed by Thor. Romanoff tenses ever so slightly as she takes in the sight of them, but some kind of understanding settles in her gaze a moment later. He's not the only one that notices.
"Did you know about this?" Bruce asks her.
"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" She fires back.
"Oh, no, no, I was in Calcutta, I was pretty far removed. I'm in this now."
"So, you brought us here to steal back your big secret weapon, and you did it because you thought you could keep us in the dark," Tony scoffs. "Personally, I'm offended."
"You want me on board with you making more weapons just like Hydra's?" Bucky demands scathingly. "I thought SHIELD was supposed to be different."
Fury pinches the bridge of his nose. "The weapons are preventive."
"Surely you understand that it is your work with the Tesseract that drew Loki to it," Thor says, disbelieving. "Had you not meddled with forces beyond your control, Earth would have remained safe."
"Safe? The entire reason we 'meddled with forces beyond our control' is because of you." Fury swivels that hard eye directly at Thor.
"Me? Surely—"
"Last year, your grudge match levelled a small town," Fury responds. "We learned that not only are we not alone, we are hopelessly – hilariously – outgunned."
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," retorts Thor.
"But you're not the only people out there. Nor the only threat. You forced my hand, because Earth can't be left at anyone else's mercy."
Tony laughs. "So you decided to play a little god yourself?"
"If not us, then who else?"
Bucky's head is pounding, but that only drives the irritation further. He clenches his jaw. "Funny. Johann Schmidt said something along those lines."
"SHIELD isn't-!"
"I thought humans were more evolved than this."
"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?" – "…mistrust-?" – "Are you boys really that naïve? SHIELD monitors potential threats!"
"Who's on that list?" Bucky's voice is immediately drowned out in the fray. His head spikes with pain. He stands his ground, eyes darting between each of the others.
"We're just trying to control—" – "Like you controlled the Tesseract? That worked out well, didn't it?" – "You speak of control, yet you court chaos!"
"It's his M.O., isn't it? I mean, we're not a team. No, we're a ticking time bomb." Bruce chuckles, but there's no mirth behind it.
"Agent Romanoff, would you please escort Dr Banner to his—"
"Where? You rented my room."
"The cell was just in case."
"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't, I know, I tried!"
All of the voices abruptly stop, every eye swivelling to Bruce, who falters.
"I… I got low." Bruce lifts his head, looking Fury in the eye. "I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spat it out. So I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone else at risk."
As if he's in a trance, Bruce's hand finds the sceptre. Bucky straightens.
"You wanna know my secret Agent Romanoff? How I stay calm?" He says, almost dreamlike.
"Doctor Banner," Fury's tone is warning. "Put down the sceptre."
Bruce blinks, and suddenly the trance is broken. He looks incomprehensibly at the sceptre in his hand, a frown on his face.
A rapid beeping emits from a computer somewhere behind Bucky, snapping the room back to attention. Shakily, Bruce puts down the sceptre and pushes past him to the computer. It draws Fury's gaze back to Bucky.
"The Hydra weapons. Why." Bucky's voice is quiet now, but has lost none of its bite.
"Research," Fury emphasises. "Look. I know it looks bad—"
"Actually, it seems like it is pretty bad to have Nazi weapons in your basement," Tony comments.
"—but in order to understand what we were dealing with," Fury continues, ignoring Tony, "we needed to know as much as we could."
Bucky's jaw clenches further. "You should have left it in the ocean."
"Oh, my god." Bruce's voice draws their attention. Bucky turns, and the doctor has gone pale. Before anyone can so much as open their mouths, the room explodes in a cacophony of light and noise.
Bucky groans, rolling onto his back. Glass and debris crunches beneath him as he staggers to his feet, eyes watering from the settling dust. He coughs, throat burning. Someone shifts beside him – Tony. He grabs the man's arm and hauls him to his feet.
"Suit," he manages. Tony nods, a dazed look in his eye. Bucky spares only a glance backwards at the ruined lab – Fury sitting up, Thor disappearing out of the opposite door. Bruce and Romanoff nowhere to be seen. He hesitates, but Fury's head snaps up and he waves Bucky away.
"Go!"
Bucky nods. As he turns to leave, he catches sight of his rifle – he'd left it here earlier. Grimly, he slings it over his shoulder and takes off down the hall, checking that it's loaded and ready to go. Now, the SHIELD agents he encounters are almost all running in the opposite direction, some wounded, some carrying guns, others shouting frantically into devices, all barely sparing him a glance – he's takes that as a sign that he's going the right way.
His earpiece crackles, and Hill's voice comes through. "Somebody's got to get inside and patch engine three, or we're going down."
Fury's voice answers. "Stark, you got that?"
"On it," Tony responds. "Barnes, find engine three. I'll meet you there."
"Right," Bucky confirms. At that moment, an agent skids around a corner, and he holds out his hands. "Wait! Engine three – where is it?"
She turns to him, dazed – blood runs down one side of her face. She recognises him, and points down towards the hall she just came from. "There's hostiles, they got in through there," she tells him shakily.
"Okay. Get outta here," Bucky replies. She obeys instantly, and his progress now is much more careful, rifle at the ready in his hands – but he encounters no one, aside from SHIELD personnel struggling to put out fires at the split in the hall. Bucky goes right – and there's the door to the engine control room, wedged open by a small chunk of debris. He gets his hands into the gap and hauls the door open. Instantly, wind buffets him, and he's greeted with the sight of a ruined once-room, entire sections of floor simply gone.
"Stark, I'm here!"
"Okay, great." Tony's suddenly in front of him, surveying the engine. "I need you to get to that control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position." He points across to a panel in the wall. Bucky eyes the floor – or rather, the lack of floor – between him and the panel.
"Got it," Bucky says grimly. He returns to the hall and takes a steadying breath, gaze fixed on the panel. He sprints forward and leaps, stomach dropping as his momentum carries him across the great gap – and straight into the wall next to the panel.
Winded, Bucky grapples with a protesting piece of what might have been a handle, and pushes himself onto the mercifully steady floor. With only a moment's pause to recover, he scrambles to his feet and pulls out the panel.
"What's it look like in there?"
Bucky's gaze roves helplessly over the tangle of wires within. He lets out a frustrated breath. "You're asking me that?"
"Okay, grandpa, look for the relays." Tony describes them to him patiently, and Bucky quickly finds locates them.
"Got 'em."
"Are any of them damaged?"
"No, they're all intact."
"One less headache. Okay, push that panel back in. This thing's gonna need a jump, it won't be enough to clear the rotors. I'll have to get in there and push."
"Push? If that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded."
"Then stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage—"
"Speak English!" Bucky snaps. With a long-suffering sigh, Tony begins again.
"See that red lever? Stand by it. When I give the word, pull it – it'll slow the rotors long enough for me to get out."
"You sure about this?"
"Seventy percent sure."
Bucky winces as he glances to the red lever. He'll have to jump for it again, and it's a distinctly bigger gap. Eyeing it critically, he readies… and kicks off.
His landing is unsteady, but he's made it. He leans heavily against the wall next to the red lever, checking over his rifle, watching Stark disappear into the unmoving rotors.
With a heavy groan, the giant metal blades start to budge. He watches with bated breath – until gunfire ricochets off the floor underfoot, narrowly missing him. He glances sharply upwards just in time to see his attacker drop from the upper level, landing squarely on top of Bucky and driving him to the floor.
Not SHIELD. Crap.
Bucky twists, kicking the man off him with a growl and scrambling to his feet. The other man recovers just as quickly, and swings his rifle around so fast that Bucky doesn't have time to react. Pain explodes from the side of his head and he staggers into the wall, one ear ringing in protest. Gritting his teeth, Bucky reaches for his hip and his fingers close around one of his knives. He ducks out of the way of another swing and retaliates with a stab into the man's shoulder.
The man shouts in pain, but Bucky doesn't waste a second. He kicks him in the stomach, driving him backwards – and straight off the platform.
The man disappears into the open sky, leaving Bucky standing there with his knife. He can feel the blood trickling down his face, but he's left no time to do anything – movement in the door below him catches his eye.
Bucky brings about his rifle, stocking it securely against his shoulder. One, two times he pulls the trigger – two of the armoured men go down before they realise what's happening. The other three duck into cover, shouting frantically to each other.
He exhales, dropping to one knee and glaring down the sight of his rifle. He counts to twenty before one of the men ventures a peek around the corner – BAM. The man falls immediately and doesn't get up again. The count resumes. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Behind him, the rotors are picking up their whirring. Any time, now, Tony.
A hand darts out from behind the door frame. Bucky fires, and with a disembodied howl, the hand is withdrawn. Something small and round falls from it, rolling back towards its unfortunate owner.
He hears the man scramble to get away from his own grenade – and explodes with a boom that has Bucky casting an anxious glance at the place where the floor is only just secured to the wall.
"Barnes, pull the lever," Tony says into his ear.
"On it." Bucky rises, reaching for the lever. The scuff of a boot. Cling, goes a second grenade, rolling to a stop at Bucky's feet. Bucky swears, kicking it away from him, back towards the doorway, just as one of the men dares a leap at his platform.
The grenade goes off, propelling the man forward and making Bucky stumble. The man crashes into him, knocking him off-balance.
"Lever! Now!"
Bucky doesn't get the chance to reply. The man barrels into him, slamming him against the wall and driving all the breath from his lungs, his rifle clattering to the floor.
"Pull the—! oh no."
He hears the screech of metal against metal. Desperately, Bucky reaches for the lever, his attacker's hands closing around his throat just as Bucky's hand grabs ahold of the lever. He pulls the lever.
The screeching stops, and now Bucky turns all his attention to getting the man off him. He kicks out at the man's legs, hearing a distinct crack. With grim satisfaction, he ignores the cry of pain and pushes his attacker back –
Another spray of bullets narrowly misses his head. While Bucky's distracted, his opponent throws himself at him. Bucky's heart leaps into his mouth as his feet leave the floor, and suddenly there's nothing below him but open sky. He slams his prosthetic arm into the jagged remains of the floor, his shoulder screaming in protest as he comes to a sudden stop, dangling from the edge.
Damn it.
The man stands over him, holding Bucky's rifle and aiming it directly at him. Thinking fast, Bucky reaches for his holster and whips out his handgun, firing before his would-be killer can. His rifle clatters to the floor. The man falls. Sending a silent prayer of thanks skybound to whatever god is listening, Bucky pushes his handgun onto the floor above him and begins to haul himself up.
Heavy feet land on the platform, and Bucky can feel the metal shaking with those footsteps. This man wastes no time in raising a foot, ready to stomp on his hand – Bucky only narrowly lets go in time to spare his flesh hand, his stomach dropping as his prosthetic lurches with the weight.
The man snarls and redirects the kick at his prosthetic, and Bucky tries to reach for his other holstered gun. The man sneers, aiming his own gun at Bucky –
And then a red and gold blur crashes into him. Bucky almost cries out in relief, heaving himself up and onto the platform, yanking his mangled prosthetic free of the metal floor. He collapses there, chest heaving, staring up at the platforms above him, for a long moment.
Somewhere behind him, Tony groans. Bucky closes his eyes, and tries to recover his breath.