Chapter 9: Together

Author's Note: So this is the last chapter of this fic :D But we're posting the first part of the sequel fic called Price of Freedom at the same time, so for anyone who wants a continuation, feel free to check it out. :D

~ Tirana Sorki

Fury won't call it a win. Steve is almost certain of that, but what matters is that the cube is out of human hands.

But it's a plus and Steve will take what he can get right now.

Now that Loki's safely gone with Thor and the Cube – the two greatest threats at the moment – Steve turns his full attention to Bucky.

"They told me you were dead." He looks torn, gutted, scared. Steve sees his recognition, but he looks nothing like the friend he lost. He's changed so much since then.

"I thought you were dead," Steve breathes. "I saw..." He doesn't want to think about that right now. "I don't understand. How are you here?"

Bucky's eyes drift past him to Sam and he clams up instantly. He's terrified and Steve can't remember the last time he saw his best friend scared. He was never shaken in the war.

Sam backs away a little, still watching them both uncertainly.

"You need to go to a hospital," Bucky tells him, limping to his feet. He's injured a little, at least minorly.

"So do you," Steve argues, "I'll get you somewhere, first." The other Avengers are gathering around. He sees Tony, Rhodey, and Natasha. Clint and Hulk must be somewhere nearby. The fight's over.

"No, I can't go. I have to disappear."

He's panicking and Steve's panicking and he's trying to stay calm and reasonable but none of this makes sense. How did Bucky get amnesia? Was it from the fall? And how is he so young? "Why? Bucky, tell me what's going on."

He's looking at the others, though. Steve's seen animals cornered, and this is exactly what they look like. Searching, scanning for ways to escape. Trying to find a way to run and a place to hide.

"Hey," Tony calls, waving, leaning on Rhodey a bit for support. "If you're not gonna murder anybody, we can fly back to New York and catch a meal."

"I'm going to find Hulk," Natasha says, "And try to calm him down. We could use Bruce right now."

"I can't go," Bucky repeats reluctantly. "They're looking for me."

Steve still doesn't know what they Bucky is even working for. He has so many questions about what happened to him.

"You can trust them," Steve objects, gaze flicking to the others he fought with here.

He doesn't believe him. Bucky doesn't argue, but Steve still sees it. There's a fear in his eyes, and he's afraid of everyone. They need to get him somewhere he can wind down and process enough to talk.

He's feeling a little dizzy and lightheaded, too, which is not a good thing. "How about we fly back to Stark Tower and talk this over?" Steve suggests finally.

**w**

Bucky's dead quiet the entire ride. Steve passes on Loki's messages to the rest of them, wishing he could've done it himself, but at least Thor's gone. The fight's done, even if there's a lot to rebuild.

Steve gets banished to the hospital despite his protests, as does Tony, leaving Natasha to occupy Bucky and Bruce to handle Clint's glass-cuts. There... were a lot. On himself, Steve wouldn't have blinked. He's not easy to cut. But a teammate is different.

Rhodey leaves, saying something about helping with cleanup, and Sam hangs by until Steve is out before he gets sent home with a minor concussion and whines about it the whole way.

Rhodey tells them later he found Eric Selvig, who allegedly did make the portal. Apparently, Thor was holding one of his friends hostage to get him to comply. Tactics Steve is horrifyingly familiar too. Whatever happens to Thor, he hopes the Asgardian is tried fairly for what he did to them all.

Either way, it's a full day and a half before Steve finally gets back to Stark Tower to where his best friend is, by which point he's itching with the need to get back. Bucky was scared, and he needs to find out why. What changed him so much, who made him into an assassin and where he's been all these years.

Natasha greets them with a smile and Tony makes a beeline off to find someone called Pepper while saying something about taking a drink.

"How is he?" Steve asks the redhead.

"He doesn't really talk. At least not to me. Clint and Bruce are getting him to loosen up a little bit. We're working on it, but he's pretty tense."

"Do you know what's wrong?"

"Whoever turned him into this, programmed him or whatever they did – he thinks they'll find him. He won't say more than that. Tony's offered to keep him here indefinitely. But he's not a prisoner, and I think he needs to understand that."

"I'll talk to him," Steve says, "Alone?"

She nods. "Yeah. He zones out a lot. Reminds me a little of the... the Red Room. The place I was trained." She sighs.

Steve wants to ask. He doesn't.

Instead, he finds him in a seat room area, Clint slouched on the other end of the couch he's on. Bucky looks up the instant Steve enters, and he relaxes almost imperceptibly.

Clint waves. "Hey," he says, standing, "Good to see you're out. You got beat up pretty good."

Steve offers him a half-hearted smile. It's nice to deal with the... surgery thing in this time. Easier than the past, where they had to cut the bullets out before his body healed over with the metal still inside. He has nightmares about that sometimes. It was... Well, being shot's not so bad, but it wasn't his idea of a party, either.

"You staying around?" Steve asks him.

Clint shrugs. "I don't know. I've got a couple of things to take care of. A few places to go, but Tasha and I will be in touch."

He leaves the room from there, and Steve watches him go. For as hard as the first month since the ice has been, he still has friends. Not the same as the Howling Commandos or the Barnes, but still friends. People he can trust.

"Bucky?" Steve approaches him slowly, sliding onto the seat Clint just vacated.

"You only had to go because I put you there."

"Don't," Steve objects, even if he knows it's true. He was hurt by the Chitauri, but not enough to warrant a hospital visit.

"It's true," he protests. "I..." He cuts off, looking down at his hand, flexing the limb. He's changed clothes anyway, into something more normal and casual, but his left arm still stands out, hand gray and shiny.

"What happened to your arm?" Steve asks, and he has his guesses, but it feels like more of an icebreaker than anything else he has to say.

Bucky sighs. "I don't remember. I fell, then I woke up and it was gone. I think it took the brunt of the fall. Broke it somewhere."

Steve's gut vaults wildly. Shouldn't have started with that question.

"How did you survive?" Bucky asks him. He looks almost wounded. "They told me you were in a plane crash. How...?"

"I went after Red Skull. He turned his plane into a bomb. I crashed it in the Arctic. When the windows cracked, and the plane flooded. The water froze, and they got me out about a month ago." He'll never forget the last moments as everything was freezing over. He still can't stand any kind of cold anymore. It reminds him too much of that.

"You were frozen?" Bucky's voice is horrified. A horror that seems almost familiar.

"Yeah. Don't really remember it." That's a lie. He does remember it. He remembers the sound of shattering glass, the water flooding the ship and flashes of ice closing around him, numbing his body one bit at a time. While he was too exhausted to move. And he thought he'd die there, and all he could think about was Bucky falling towards the snowy mountain.

He thought they'd die the same way.

Steve pushes past that, trying not to think about it.

Is the past something Bucky can talk about? He doesn't know. "I know you don't trust the others, but... I know them."

"How long?"

"We fought together. They're friends." Bucky understands that bond better than anyone else in this time, maybe. They were in the army together, and the bonds they both formed with the other Howling Commandos were nothing like they had before. It's a level of trust that he could never express to anyone else.

"Steve." He shifts a little on the couch, leaning forwards, eyes darting around the room. "HYDRA's not gone." His hand is shaking, and he rests it on his left to keep it still. He's holding himself awkwardly, like his shoulder hurts.

"We destroyed their last base. That was our last mission. Right after the rail car."

"They captured me. They're – they're everywhere, Steve." He exhales shudderingly. "They wanted Thor to – to take Earth. They sent me to help him."

His mind is reeling. That doesn't – it can't –

But it does, because HYDRA would have wanted that to cause more chaos. That's just what they did. That and the cube, and then Steve remembers the weapons and what Fury was saying about them, and –

SHEILD is –

It was made by Howard and Peggy. They wouldn't have let something like this happen, but they didn't know, did they?

He doesn't understand.

Bucky's staring at him. He knows what Natasha meant about him now. "It's not safe for me here."

"I won't let them take you again." He means that. He swears he does – he won't let Bucky get hurt again. He did that once and he won't do it again.

"You can't stop them." He says it with a horrified amount of certainty. "The – Avengers. You can't trust them."

His gut clenches. "Are you certain?"

"If – if they're not HYDRA, they know people. They can talk."

He has a point, and Steve has absolutely no idea what to say to him about it. He can't imagine any of them doing this, but how can he know? He hasn't known any of them for long. He hasn't seen a change in anything. Tony was Howard's son. But with the weapons and all he was involved in, very shady things, it's apparent he was at least... in cooperation with them. Willingly or not.

Natasha and Clint? He knows nothing about their pasts. They're SHIELD agents.

Bruce? Steve can't imagine he was ever involved in anything... shady, but he was trying to recreate the serum. Hydra would've wanted it. Either involved or influenced. Like Tony. Sam and Rhodey? He knows nothing about them. Loki is the only safe one, and he's gone.

What about Fury? He doesn't know.

For the first time in his life, Steve has no idea what to do.

"They're going to find me," Bucky says, slowly slumping further in his seat, "I – I remember you now. But it...I can't... they have these... words." He shudders. "Programming, I can't stop it."

What does that mean? Steve has no idea, and he's scared to ask. All he can do is slowly reach over, lying his hand on his best friend's wrist. "We'll figure something out," he promises.

Bucky looks up at him, his eyes lost and helpless. It hurts to see him this way. He doesn't say anything. He's quiet so much, and Steve can't tell why – if he's afraid to talk or if he's just not used to it. He hopes it's the latter – he doesn't know what he'd ever do if Bucky was afraid of him.

"This isn't something we can punch our way through, Steve." He looks sullen. Wounded.

Broken.

Steve sighs. "Loki promised to come back. We could get his help."

"What do we do?"

Steve doesn't know. He hates that he doesn't, but for once in his life he's in over his head. "We need to find people we can trust." That comes by precious few these days. He knows no one, and he can't talk to anyone about Bucky, just in case the word slips out. He'll have to disappear, and hope none of the Avengers say a word to the wrong person.

It's betting heavily on people he doesn't know but it's the only choice they have.

Steve is used to counting on people, though – he relies on people, and that's always what's set him apart from most. He's not for... ideals. Things.

He's just gonna hafta hope those instincts don't let him down.

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