Title is from "Hopless Wanderer" by Mumford and Sons

Avengers belongs to Marvel. This is a fan-work for entertainment purposes only.

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Chapter 2: Hopeless Wanderer

The sounds of birdsong still disoriented him in the morning. It shouldn't. A handful of seasons had passed since the catastrophic event that had shaken the globe and left his handlers in such disarray that he had managed to escape into the unknown. A handful of seasons since the last time he had been put back in the freezer, his mind silenced in between brief stints of work, just gaping black holes in his memories and no idea how many days, or years, or decades had passed this time.

The memories of so many days in a row was almost overwhelming, but he could take solace in the way they were largely so quiet and uneventful; They all but blended together into one endless, blurry dream, interspersed with the occasional brief but violent encounter with shadows of his past.

Reluctantly, the soldier opened his eyes. Golden sunlight filtered through the canopy overhead, rippling in the soft breeze and he felt like he was trapped under water. When he sat up he found the dirt around him had been torn apart. Finger grooves and boot marks dug furrows into the forest floor like had been thrashing all night, but when he held up his hands, turning them over and over in a ritualized inspection, he found only dirt under his fingernails. No blood.

Sometimes he wasn't so lucky.

Sometimes he woke up covered in things much less pleasant than dirt, and surrounded by things much less alive than the birds chirruping on around him in blissful oblivion to the monster below.

Today was a lucky one, though, so he rose, and stretched, and made his way down to the stream burbling through the underbrush nearby. When he rinsed his arms off in a small pool, it turned a pale cloudy tan. There were no streamers of crimson that had to be washed from his mind along with his skin.

The water, probably late-season snowmelt, was cold against the skin of his right hand. His left remained strangely numb to temperatures, and the metal glittered like fish as the dirt flaked away.

With his hands cleaned, he peeled the bandages under his shirt up to check on the slowly healing gash on his side. The edges were red and puffy, and stung at the touch like they were developing an infection. This was not surprising, as he'd been pierced through with a thick water pipe in a collapsing building that looked like it had been abandoned long before the fallout. The injury had finally stopped oozing blood, though, and the flesh around the scab looked like it was beginning to knit back together. He didn't have any tools or medicine to treat it with, but his modified body should be able to handle some minor infection on its own as long as he took it easy.

After that, came the walking. He was always walking. He didn't dare stay in one place too long, someone would find him. Or he would find someone else. He needed to stay invisible. Invisible was better. Invisible was safer for everyone.

By Midday he had followed the stream to where it merged into a river. Here, he stopped to refill his canteen and eat a quick meal of edible roots he'd upturned yesterday, supplemented with some very old protein bars, and to think about what to do about the shadow he had acquired. For at least the last two miles, and possibly since he'd awoken, someone had been following him. This didn't bother him as much as the fact that he didn't know when exactly he had picked up this follower. Not many people had the skill to follow him without him realizing it right away.

The soldier kept his face towards the river while he ate. He was pretty sure his tail was in the big tree behind him with the gnarled branch. It was too far away to tell with any certainty, but he thought he had caught a shadow moving in the wrong direction as the branches swayed in the wind.

What he couldn't figure out was why they hadn't made a move yet. Any half-way decent sniper would have taken the shot by now. He had given them half a dozen chances at least over the last mile in an attempt to draw them out, and still they had made no move to do anything but follow at a distance. Were they waiting for him to fall asleep? A part of him laughed at their caution. Another part found it sensible. The bravado of his previous guests, after all, had led to nothing but their deaths. This one was different, and that concerned him.

The stranger in the tree had still not made a move by the time the soldier decided he had lingered too long on the riverbank and moved on, abandoning the water and weaving into the deeper parts of the forest in an attempt to shake this new tail.

At some point amid his switchbacks and ducking between hills and brambles the stranger vanished, and he dared hope they may have either lost interest in him, or his maneuvers had worked. By the time the sun was beginning to set and the first chills of evening were setting in, the soldier was feeling pretty confident in his solitude. He'd sighted a clearing with a small pond from the top of a hill earlier and was heading towards it now with the intention of refilling his now empty canteen and spending the night nearby.

The trees cut off abruptly at the edge of the clearing, allowing the soldier to pause in the shadows and survey the open area before entering. Immediately, something strange caught his attention at the shore of the pond. A ring of rocks, neatly arranged around a pile of kindling and firewood sat in he middle of a dirt patch. It was obvious this was a fresh fire ring, not the left-overs from some previous camper who had failed to disassemble their camp before leaving. In fact, he doubted any fire had ever been lit there before. If the freshly churned dirt and lack of ash didn't make that obvious enough, the pair of freshly killed rabbits, already gutted and lined neatly next to it, was more than enough to set off alarms in his head.

The hairs on the back of his neck stuck up and the soldier quickly melted back into the forest. He wouldn't be sleeping tonight.

-x-

The next morning, as the birds began their songs and the sun rose over the mountains, the Soldier was still being followed. There was a gap in the birdsong to the East. It was brief, but he had no doubt that something had disturbed them. Something big enough to give them pause, but not enough to send them scattering to the sky or screeching alarms. His shadow seemed to favor the trees.

He had spent the whole night trying to lose his tracks, but it hadn't worked. The stranger was still there, and still had made no move to engage. Did they plan to run him down? To push him like a spooked deer until he was too weak and exhausted to put up a good fight? It was a cowardly tactic, but no less effective for that. The soldier knew he had more endurance than a standard human, but even he could succumb to a lack of rest eventually, and the healing injuries on his side were slowing him down significantly.

By mid morning he had stumbled across a deep gorge that offered him no way down. It's sheer sides dropped several hundred feet and landed in a rocky canyon floor that would have no mercy for any soul unlucky enough to slip over the edge. The impassable landmark cut straight across his intended path, and he was forced to pace along its side until a way down appeared.

By the afternoon no such way had appeared and he retreated to the cool shade of the deeper forest to take a break. His canteen had been empty since the afternoon before, and he was kicking at himself viciously for letting himself be made stupid in his vie to escape his pursuer. The nearest water source he could find was the dried up river at the base of the canyon he'd been pacing along, and he hadn't spared the time to hunt or forage for more food. He'd been so certain that the shadow could be shaken or dealt with quickly that he had not planned ahead for the pursuit to last this long.

By evening, his stomach was growling and a sharp ache in his skull heralded the dehydration beginning to take its toll on his body. The wound on his side was beginning to burn and throb with each step and his temper was beginning to rear its own short but ugly head. If the stranger would just engage, this could be over, but they always seemed to be just far enough away that they could flee long before the Soldier could double back to catch them and force an altercation, but close enough to swoop in with ease if he attempted to catch a short nap or stop to set snares. The soldier's own initial underestimation of his enemy had put him at a disadvantage.

He did not sleep that night either. His progress was slowed considerably by his exhaustion, and lack of knowledge of the terrain. By the third time he was forced to turn around by an obstacle he had not expected, his stomach was burning with acid and frustration. His temper was short and frayed, and he had no patience for his own mistakes right now.

When the sun rose that third morning he was sitting on a stream bed, taking a break and refilling his canteen as he reconsidered the wisdom of choosing to run instead of fight after all. This problem was dragging on much longer than it needed to. He'd lost track of his tail again some time before sunrise and now he found himself a thick tree to lean against. The burly trunk grew from an outcropping of rock, and here he was protected from most angles from the surrounding forest and any opportune sniper shots his still unknown guest may take. The only way to see him was from directly in front where the trees were small and thin, and provided terrible coverage.

Exhaustion settled heavy in his bones, and he allowed the peaceful forest and soft murmuring of the stream to lull him into a half-sleep. He awoke some time later to the rumbling of his stomach and the sense of being watched.

"Alright, who's out there?!" he shouted into the surrounding trees, drawing a blade from where it had been tucked into his boot. His last gun had been lost, buried under several tons of concrete in the last city he had fled, so he would just have to make do with the small blade. "Show yourself and let's get this over with!"

Something moved in the trees to his left. He could hear the branch creak and the leaves rustle, but the rocks around him blocked his view. There was heavy thunk, like someone had dropped down to land on the far side of the rocks, and he took his chance, leaping over the boulders and driving his blade straight down into where his follower should be standing. His knife cut through empty air and he froze. At his feet sat a backpack, the kind a kid would carry to school, with little cartoon cats and dogs dancing across it. The sound of laughter brought his attention upwards where a man was crouched easily on a branch some ten yards or so up a tree.

"Good reflexes and all," the stranger called down, "but it's just a bag."

"Who are you?" the soldier growled. The man up in the tree had some sort of tactical gear on, but it wasn't from any organization he recognized. He had dirty blond hair that somehow managed to look unruly despite being cropped short. A dark bow and quiver full of matching arrows was strapped to his back, and the braces and guards around his wrists gave off the impression this was his main weapon of choice.

The stranger in the tree gave a little wave. "You can call me Hawkeye," he said through a lopsided grin.

"What do you want?" The soldier rolled the knife in his hands, very aware of the fact that the rocks he was now backed up against made him an easy target for the sniper above, and the burst of pain in his side where he had aggravated his wound meant getting back over it would be a problem. His enemy didn't have a weapon drawn, though, and if it came to it, he could probably make it to the trees for cover before this Hawkeye could fire off his first shot.

"To give you that." Hawkeye pointed at the bag still sitting at the soldier's feet. "You've been dragging your feet through my forest for days. You clearly have no clue where you're going and you're injured, so I thought I might help you along before you died here and I had to bury you or worry someone would come looking."

Cautiously, the soldier dropped to one knee, still ready to flee into cover if the sniper made any sudden moves, and unzipped the bag. Inside was a first aide kit, some bottles of water, a dozen or so granola bars, a firestarter, and a thin foil blanket.

"What the hell is this?"

"You're welcome," Hawkeye grinned. "Look I'm not trying to give you the bum's rush, here. You can take a day or two and recover. Since you were trying so hard to get across the canyon, I'm guessing you're planning to avoid the town at the bottom of the hills. Well, it just so happens I know a way across, but it's a rough trail and you're in a bit of a bad shape right now. There's an old campsite a couple miles up this stream-"

"Are you an idiot?" he interrupted roughly. "If this was all you wanted, why have you been chasing me for days? You had plenty of opportunities to engage."

A pair of sunglasses obscured the stranger's eyes, but he brought one hand up to rub at the back of his neck. "I wasn't sure if you had a gun or not," he admitted sheepishly. "You looked like the type to shoot first and ask questions later. I tried leaving you some rabbits as a peace offering but you just ran away. Maybe I should have left a note or something.

"Look, I just came here to make sure you weren't a threat and offer you help, so... take the campsite, leave it, I don't care. Just don't die in my forest, okay kid?"

The soldier narrowed his eyes. "I am not a-"

But the stranger was already up. "Okay, see ya!" Hawkeye took a running leap from his branch and, much like a squirrel, was quickly swallowed up by the forest.

The soldier grabbed up the bag and hurtled it after the retreating form with a curse that sent a bird startling with a squawk from a nearby tree. He stood for a while, seething and breathing heavily through his nose before retrieving the bag and dragging it back to between the rocks where he had been sitting earlier.

End

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Chapter 3 Preview: "...I need this!" Jane Foster's voice was rough with exhaustion. "I was up all night converting the data from our equipment."

"Yeah, and I was up all night lugging your equipment around so you could get the readings!" Darcy shot back, but there was no real anger in her voice, and Natasha felt no need to interrupt their fairly regular ritual. "Ugh, I miss having my own intern..."

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This is a much shorter chapter than most of my regular readers will be used to, it's not even 3k. It's the shortest non-one-shot I've ever written, lol. Since Tenebris will have several revolving plotlines, this might be a regular occurrence in this book. It's also probably a blessing in disguise because writing an entire chapter featuring one character without a name and an unknown follower was... strange. xD And I'm sure it was exhausting for you guys as well. Rest assured this won't be for long, but as far as I know, Bucky should be unaware of his name or really much of anything about his own past right now.

Once we get into it though, these two are probably my favorite odd mashup I get to play around with here. What can I say, angry balls of rage and sarcastic balls of sunshine who complete each other are my favorite thing. I guess I don't get enough of it in the other books. lol.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

-OMaM