Chapter 5: Winter Soldier
Steve aches from how hard he was thrown, but he picks himself up fast enough. The hole in the center of the room makes it hard to move, but he shakes it off. He's had worse. He's always had worse, and always picks himself back up. Fury's saying something about one of the engines being offline. Everything is so loud; his head is throbbing and there are definitely a few pinpricks of glass stabbed through his suit.
"Guess the Winter Ghost is back," Tony announces.
"Winter Soldier," Natasha corrects again, picking herself up.
Clint leans down to help her up, shaking the glass shards off of them both.
"I'm gonna need a hand getting the engine running," Tony tells them, "You're welcome to help out." He makes for the doorway.
"Guess I'll go," Clint says with a shrug, "Tasha? Find the ghost."
She nods with a small smile, and her and Steve scramble out into the rest of the helicarrier.
"He'll be going for Thor," Steve tells her, "Do you know a fast way there? We have to cut him off."
She hesitates for a moment, looking up and down the halls. "Sure." And from there, they take off.
He ducks backwards out of the way as someone fires a shot at them from the end of the hall, yanking his shield out and raising it in front of him.
"That doesn't look like him," Natasha whispers, pulling her guns and leveling them towards the end of the hall.
Steve glances at her wordlessly, pushing forwards, anyway.
Natasha and the newcomer exchange fire across the hall. Steve throws his shield at him, taking him down. They're in black with some kind of helmet on. He's getting more questions than answers the further they fight, and Steve is really liking this less and less.
Who are these people? Where did they come from, and why are they doing this?
They cross a few more places where everything is burning, which slows them down probably far more than is safe, before Natasha leads them to a central walkway, with help from a couple pointers of people she's talking to over their communication systems.
Steve jerks his shield up to block a bullet that comes from the end of the hall. Rifle. He shoves Natasha back so she can get to cover, and he has a split second where he gets a very, very good look at their attacker – the same assassin as before – right before he fires something else. It's not a bullet that pings off the shield this time. It's an explosive, and Steve is thrown back.
His back hits the railing and he falls through it, crashing down and grabbing a handhold on the thankfully uneven wall to keep himself aloft.
(He tries not to think about Bucky. This is what happened to him.)
Steve grunts, panting. His back aches. It's burning and probably bruised badly. He's lucky he didn't break it – if not for the serum, he would've shattered his spine in probably a dozen places.
Natasha grunts somewhere up above him. The rifle is going off. He twists to look around to where Natasha is – like an absolute moron – trying to wrestle the rifle out of the assassin's hands.
She's good, but she's not good enough for that.
Steve grabs a higher handhold, climbing the wall.
There's a distant crashing. It feels lighter. There are sounds in the background – a fight somewhere else, and Steve has the really bad feeling they're heading downwards.
He grips the metal stuck out of the wall a little tighter.
Another explosion goes off. The helicarrier shudders, and Steve hears something crackling. Lights flicker, then go off altogether. It's short circuited. The walls are smoking. The lightning storm Loki warned them of. They're going down.
By the time he finally makes it back to the platform and stops to grab his shield, the assassin has Natasha shoved against a pillar, metal hand on her throat.
Steve's shield hits him, and he stumbles back, slamming into the rail hard enough it bends. The assassin shoves himself upright and they trade blows. He's strong. Too strong – he mostly uses his metal arm, but he's...
It's like he's enhanced, too.
Steve always knew he wasn't the only one – Red Skull – but this still isn't what he expected.
Natasha's still trying to recover.
The Winter Soldier rips his shield from his hands and his foot smacks Steve in the stomach. He drops, skidding back and stumbling upright.
Oww.
He's never had his shield taken from him like this before. Or thrown at him when it flies his direction. Steve narrowly avoids dodging getting his arm removed, and the shield imbeds itself in the doorway far behind him.
He doesn't have a millisecond longer to think of that when a knife comes out of what he could swear was nowhere and stabs at his neck, but that's not the same flashy in and out of existence thing Loki does, so he's probably just human.
Steve backs up, blocking the attacks until he trips into the wall and twists aside to leverage the blade away so it nearly smacks the wall instead of stabbing him.
The structure shutters again, louder and closer, and jerks, nearly dislodging them both. Something in the ceiling cracks, then breaks and gives way altogether, debris crashing downwards. Light from a clouded, stormy sky streams down them, rain pouring through the hole.
Natasha comes out of nowhere, jumping the Winter Soldier again, pulling a string to attempt strangling him with. He stumbles backwards, tripping into a column behind him to try knocking her off.
Steve takes off down the hall, yanking his shield from its place on the wall and spinning around to see Natasha being thrown down into another column. She grabs onto it, spinning herself around it awkwardly to keep from being thrown over the edge.
"Steve!" she yells, "We have to go! We're going down!"
Something shatters in the background, an explosion far too close for comfort, and they both stumble to regain their footing.
He jerks his shield up to block another knife attack – he dropped the previous one. How many knives does he carry with him? – and grabs the metal arm to keep it from hitting him. The ground shutters, something breaking and Steve hears water. Rushing water.
(Rushing water, shattering glass, the water soaking through him and freezing –)
No.
Steve's not there. He's here, and he needs to focus.
He slams his shield into the Winter Soldier's face and twists around, yanking his mask off. He rolls over, standing, and Steve freezes, blood rushing through his head, heart pounding. The clouds from above are somewhat cleared, the rain stopped, though the air is damp and wet now. There's enough light to see the face across from him.
Steve would recognize it even if there wasn't.
"Bucky?" he breathes, eyes fixed on his best friend's face.
It's him, even if his hair is longer than Bucky would've ever let it grow, and there's a wild empty fury in his eyes that he would never have had. Bucky doesn't get angry, but this is him and he's alive even though Steve saw him fall and the reports came back empty.
"Who the hell is Bucky?" he asks, staring at him. The voice is the same, even if it sounds as wild and empty as he looks.
The ground shudders beneath their feet, and the air feels too thick, too unbreathlable, but that could just as well be Steve's inability to think. The world feels distant and fuzzy.
Bucky's alive.
And he's trying to kill them.
A gun goes off from behind Steve, and Bucky dodges a shot that would probably have hit him in the shoulder.
Steve is still tense, braced for action, but he can't think or move even if he knows he should. He's still standing there when Bucky fires at him again. An explosive pings off Steve's shield, but the explosion still throws him backwards.
Natasha yells his name.
He falls through the broken part of the rail again, hitting something else below. Metal is screeching and tearing. The area is clogged with smoke and he tries to see, but all he can see is another piece of the helicarrier roof crashing down on him.
He tries to roll out of the way but the debris lands on him, pinning him down. Metal is screeching again. The floor far beneath them is... breaking and he can see water below them. They're going down into the water.
Just like –
Before.
The helicarrier shifts with a jolt, water splashing over him, and the surging panic igniting in his chest steals his breath away. He struggles to shove the metal bar off, but the leverage is wrong and he looks up to see Natasha at the edge of the rail, fingers gripping over it.
He doesn't see Bucky.
"Steve!"
"Go!" he yells at her. This is familiar. The deja vu is smothering, too.
He's been here before. Did this. With Bucky once. Years ago.
"Just go! Get out of here!"
"Not without you!"
Steve had been able to make it then, but now is different and maybe he's far more experienced, but his mind is still jaggedly uneven and unleveled and all he can think of is how that was Bucky his best friend is still alive everyone he knows isn't dead what happened to him what –
"Stark's on his way," Natasha replies, swinging herself over the rail and dropping down to where Steve is. She's trying to help him out, like she can move it if Steve couldn't. Maybe he could. If he could actually think but his mind won't work and he can feel the water splashing across him, soaking him through –
Steve doesn't know why he expected her to go. She's a SHIELD agent, an assassin in her previous life, and she would have every reason to evacuate herself, but she won't.
He didn't think anyone else would be willing to stay here.
She tries to help him lift it, but it's too heavy to budge.
She straightens, glancing over him and grabbing up his shield, tossing it to him. "Here," she says, panting, "Try to get it out."
The beam breaks easily when he hits it, and from there it's – finally – easy to get himself out the rest of the way, fighting back to the surface of the water.
He's not freezing again. He needs to focus.
The sound of an engine has him looking up, and Loki drops onto the walkway above where they were fighting Bucky a minute before. They're saying something. There's talking, but his mind is too muddled to focus. Tony grabs his arm to haul him up, and Loki takes Natasha despite her overly vocal complaints, and Tony blasts them up through the hole in the ceiling.
He makes some snippy comment, something insulting Steve's ability to need help that he doesn't remember enough to react to.
"Where are we going?" Loki asks.
"Stark Tower," Tony answers.
Tower. The – that big, ugly building?
"No better place to lay low for a while," Natasha replies.
"Or lay high."
Steve tunes them out. Air is blurring past them, swirling across him. He struggles to inhale, to exhale, to think, to – anything. All he can see is Bucky's face in his mind. His best friend.
And he didn't even recognize him.
Bucky.
Bucky's alive.
The horizon blurs over with land and cities and then Tony lands, all but throwing Steve onto the roof. He hits the ground hard. Normally would've rolled to his feet, if he hadn't landed upright already, but his head is spinning and he can't...
"Looks like the Winter Soldier beat you both up pretty good," Tony snarks.
"Well done," Loki congratulates, "You finally got it right."
"Steve?" Natasha asks.
"It was Bucky," he blurts out, "He's alive."
Tony's helmet comes up. "Sergeant Barnes? He's been dead for seventy years, Cap. I think you're being delusional."
He can hardly find words. "It was him."
The pause is long and quiet. All three of them are looking at him.
Loki, for once, is quiet. He steps forwards, crouching to help Steve to his feet where he stands unsteadily.
"That was Bucky," he repeats, voice faint and dazed, "And we left him in that burning hellhole." The structure was at least half submerged. Did he even have a way to make it off? And what – what was he...
Tony shrugs. "He disappeared once. I'm sure he'll resurface in another seventy years or so. You'll probably be an old man by then. Well, an even older man."
"I would suggest we stop and catch a breather," Loki interrupts, "And a drink. Inside?"
"Sure." Tony walks off.
Loki looks at Steve again, his face blurred over in Steve's mind. He looks concerned, a bit. Maybe.
"Come on," Natasha requests, touching Steve's shoulder, "Let's go inside."
Steve stumbles after.
He can't get Bucky's face and the dull deadness in his eyes out of mind.
Bucky.
Final Notes: Reviews are always appreciated! ^-^
Come hang out on Discord (delete spaces), discord . gg / nqSxuz2 or find us on tumblr at fanfictasia (our more serious blog which does have controversial posts on it; I won't be offended if you choose to block it, promise), and disastertriowriting (which is our fun blog with crack posts or incorrect SW quotes)
We've got a YT channel for tributes! (delete the spaces) youtube channel / UC_g1M5rSCxJUzQCRS29B6pA
ALSO: We have SW gift request forms for General, Anakin-Clones-centric, and Bad Batch fics. :D (delete spaces) bit . ly / CourtesyTrefflinFicRequests