Thank you so, so much for reading and for leaving such supportive reviews. I don't know why this story takes me so long to update. I think each chapter takes me a long time to write because the original Marvel writers are just SO GOOD that I get intimidated and I want to do the characters justice when I'm writing the canon characters. lol Throw in a couple of bouts with the flu and I got majorly waylaid. :)
Thank you so much, FireandBlood for your always supportive reviews. I recently needed some motivation for another story and ended up going back through your YEARS of reviews and I'm pretty sure the seratonin/dopamine hit from that will carry me through the next several years. I appreciate your reviews, and your friendship, so much.
Guest, thank you so much! I promise the chapters will keep coming. Especially with the Thunderbolts* movie coming out soon! New Bucky material!
SafeCrown, I'm so glad you like Bucky and Elia both struggling and still trying to be there for each other. It's a different dynamic from my other fics and it keeps surprising me with how much fun it is to write. I'm THRILLED you're enjoying it.
ElementalNinja84, than you for taking the time to let me know you enjoy the story! It's a terrible feeling to post a chapter to nothing but crickets. Your comment is so appreciated!
Chapter 14
Steve didn't love Brooklyn. Not anymore. Or at least, he hadn't when he had first woke up from the ice. It had been jarring to see a shadow of the world he remembered. Buildings had changed, neighborhoods were different, but there were still echoes of the place he had grown up. But seeing those places without any of the people he had known had been a raw wound.
Now, he had new people around him. New faces and even some friends. He thought of Nat. He hoped she was ok. That thought had him almost smiling. If anyone was ok, it was Natasha. She knew how to take care of herself. She would be offended at Steve even wondering if she was ok.
But Bucky wasn't ok. Steve brought his thoughts back to why he was here, in Brooklyn. His friend was on the run. And, based on the Hydra files, had no idea who he was.
"Where would he be?" Sam asked.
Steve took a breath and looked around. The file hadn't said where Bucky had disappeared to when he fell off the grid decades ago. Steve was only guessing. But a guess shouldn't feel so certain. Bucky would try to go home.
He didn't want to think of what would happen when Bucky realized it wasn't home anymore.
"I don't know," Steve said. He had thought about it on the drive up to New York from DC. Where would Bucky go? "Let's start at his apartment—the building he used to live in," he corrected himself.
He had to find Bucky before any of the government agencies did. It was the only way he could protect him. Save him.
"This way," Steve said, moving without hesitation.
#
The dog tags around his neck were a familiar feel. Bucky figured he must have worn them for years to bring back the feeling of them so easily.
He looked down at the tags. James B. Barnes.
He reminded himself again that's who he was.
Dog tags were supposed to identify a body, let the chain of command know who they had lost. But these kept reminding him of who he was.
He looked over at the girl, walking alongside him. He had thought she was a liability when she careened into those people at the museum, causing a scene. But she had been getting his dog tags. Giving him something he could look down at as proof of who he was. Something that was his. Proof he still existed.
She had been quiet on the train ride back. Dozing off and on. Rubbing her hands like they hurt. And he had gotten lost somewhere in his mind for a good part of the trip. But they were off the train and safely lost in the crowds of New York now.
James Buchanan Barnes. It felt like a piece of himself could maybe come back every time he said the name to himself.
The girl was lagging behind again and he slowed his steps. The girl. She probably had a name. Did he know it? Had he heard it when they were at Hydra together?
He searched the disjointed recollections and half-formed memories. She had been there when they strapped him into the chair, hadn't she?
The chair. They would restrain him because he knew what was coming. He knew how much it would hurt. But knowing he was going to lose any sense of himself when they burned away his memories…that was the cruel part. Every time. Every time he would start to feel things, even before he got to remembering, they would destroy him. Take him down to nothing and build him into what they needed. Again and again and again.
"Bucky?"
Bucky reflexively jerked to attention. The city was loud around him. People moving past him without looking, car horns blaring.
The girl was standing next to him, no impatience showing at however long he had been standing there, lost in time again.
He needed to ask her name. Wasn't that what he had been about to do? Find out who she was? Who they both were?
He opened his mouth to ask and froze.
He recognized the building at the end of the block. He hadn't been walking to the condemned house. He had walked to the apartment building he had lived in.
He could almost see his sisters running toward the door of the building, squealing at each other as they jostled to win the race. Steve standing in front of the building, waiting for him.
Steve.
Steve wasn't a memory.
That was Steve. Standing in front of the building. Now.
Everything in Bucky hardened into one thought. Attack.
There was a threat. It had to be neutralized.
He reached for the knife, hidden at his hip.
The brush of a light touch against his sleeve stilled his hand. He looked down. The girl was looking up at him in confusion. She hadn't seen the threat.
Retreat.
They weren't in an offensive position. Not with her barely steady on her feet and the crowds around him. Steve may have snipers or a perimeter set up. They needed to get out of here.
"Move," he said to the girl.
"What?" she asked.
"Now," he ordered harshly. He started moving, watching for anyone who was with the enemy. Moving away from Steve.
He had made the kill. Ditched the gun at Dulles. And then…things were too familiar. The language, the city. He knew this place. America. D.C. New York.
New York. He started making his way towards the city. Flashes of a past life, one with family and security and…warmth. It all kept pushing forward, edging out training and programming. It came with pain. Physical pain. Sharp pains that shot through his head, ebbing and flowing, but never gone. He had gone to where those memories called from. Brooklyn.
No. That wasn't now. That was years ago. Now, he had to get away from New York. Out of this city.
"This way," he said.
"What's happening?" The girl sounded out of breath, but Bucky wasn't slowing. Not for anything. They weren't being taken captive again.
He would kill before that happened. No. He didn't want to kill. He just wanted to be free.
He had to get away from the threat.
#
The sounds of the city all blurred together as Elia struggled to keep up with Bucky. She looked up at him. His face was set, eyes dark. Not Bucky. The Soldier. This man with the hard face and the expression that responded to nothing wasn't Bucky. This was the killer Hydra had used and tortured and nearly destroyed.
She wanted to ask what he had seen, but all her efforts had to go to staying near him. Whatever had him running, she didn't want to be left on her own to face it.
Her head spun, her hands stung, and she kept moving.
He led them away from the busier streets, down an alley and back out onto a crowded street. She saw the way he kept his head low, letting the hat hide his face. She tried to remember to copy the posture. She couldn't go back to Hydra. To captivity.
Her chest tightened at the memory of the cell. The injections.
She couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't—couldn't breathe.
It wasn't the exertion.
The edges of her vision blurred, darkened.
She had to stop. Her heart thudded, a painful beat against her ribcage. She moved a hand there, like she could press her heart back into her chest, but she couldn't feel anything. Her hand had no sensation. She couldn't hear anything around her. The only sound was the thrumming of her blood in her ears.
"Keep moving," ordered Bucky—the Soldier.
"I—I can't," she gasped between panicked breaths.
The Soldier glared at her darkly and grabbed hold of the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Her feet skidded along the sidewalk as he dragged her along with him.
What was she doing, going along with him? She fought for every breath and tried to clear her vision. His profile above her was granite, fierce determination in every line on his face. She knew where he had every weapon stowed on him, what he carried in the backpack on his back. Was he any safer than Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D.?
He pulled her along through an alley. Then another. He stopped, looking around before exiting the alley.
Her vision blurred, but she tried to study him, see what had happened. Why they were running.
This wasn't the same Soldier from her time with Hydra. There were cracks in the exterior. Confusion softening the edges. She couldn't leave him. Not if it meant being picked up and caged again. And not if it meant leaving him on his own. What would happen if he got lost in the past, in the confusion, and couldn't find his way back to who he was? Never mind all the people he might hurt—or worse.
Her breathing was getting tight. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on drawing a breath.
Bucky started to move again, but she couldn't get her feet to cooperate.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
Elia had no idea. She never had. She wished she did. Or at least wished she could blame Hydra. Either way, his harsh question stung. "I have…" She stopped. Tried to steady her voice. Get herself under control. Her heart only pounded faster and she pressed an unfeeling hand harder to her chest. "Panic attacks," she said. Her voice shook. She couldn't give into it.
"What?" he asked, narrowing his eyes, like she was threatening him.
"Panic attacks," she fought to get the words out again. She needed to sit down. Try to focus on something besides her heart trying to pummel its way out of her chest and the oxygen she couldn't get. She hated the spinning, but the feeling like her heart was going to beat out of her chest, just beat hard enough to break her ribs, was even worse.
"Tell me it's not a heart attack," she gasped, reaching out to feel the building next to her. Her hand pressed against it, but she couldn't feel it. Her fingers would sometimes tingle during a panic attack, but she could still feel. Maybe this really was a heart attack. She wasn't going to survive it. She leaned more heavily against the building.
"What?" the Soldier asked again, face darkening.
"Just tell me it's a panic attack. I know…I know what it is, but I—I can't…I need someone to say it. Please," she pleaded. She was going to collapse. She fought against uncooperative fingers, trying to get a hold of something.
He was silent so long, she didn't think he would help her. Then…
"It's a panic attack," he said without much conviction.
She didn't care how much emphasis he got behind the words. Just hearing someone tell her that it was a panic attack helped. Brought her racing thoughts back to reality.
She nodded, like he hadn't been instructed to tell her that.
"It's—It's not a heart attack," she said. She tried willing her breathing to slow. Her breathing to steady.
"It's not a heart attack," he said with no more enthusiasm than the rote repetition he had the first time.
Not a heart attack. She would be fine. She repeated that to herself. Like she had a hundred times before.
And like a hundred times before, her heart eventually slowed it's thunderous pace. It still pounded, but it settled into a pace slower than a gallop. The black dots dancing in front of her blurred vision receded.
"Just a panic attack," she murmured to herself. "It won't last." She repeated the words, finding comfort in the repetition.
Cold sweat dripped down her back in the aftermath and the feeling coming back to her hands only revealed cold, clammy palms.
She drew in a long breaths through her nose. Controlled the exhale out her mouth. Again and again until she could finally let go of the building.
"Move," the Soldier said.
This time, Elia could comply. She did everything she could to keep up with his long stride.
"Thank you," she said as they moved through a crowded street.
The harsh mask of his face flickered and he slid his eyes toward her before looking ahead again, scanning the street.
"For helping me," she continued. "Thank you, Bucky."
He didn't react and she wondered if he knew who he was right now. What they were running from. Where they were. Or was he lost in some other time and place?
He moved like he had a plan, though. And as long as that plan didn't include being captured by Hydra, or arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D., it was a plan Elia would go along with.
He stopped abruptly.
Elia tried not to double over to catch her breath. It felt like they had been walking for hours. Maybe they had been. She looked up at him again. He was watching. Clocking the movements of people.
Her vision blurred, everything moving out of focus. But her heart rate didn't change. This wasn't a panic attack. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, but nothing had changed. It was nothing but a swirl of colors.
She reached out for Bucky's arm, scared he would start moving and she wouldn't see it.
He jerked his arm away and whirled toward her. Elia couldn't see his face clearly enough to read what he was feeling. Only his military, defensive posture.
"Bucky," she said, trying for a calm tone, but her voice shook in the face of his frame towering over her. "I just…I can't see well."
He didn't move. She blinked frantically, needing to be able to see, to know what was happening. She strained, trying to get her eyes to focus.
His features slowly took form. He was staring at her. But the relief at being able to see again was lost under the uneasiness of who was looking at her. The Soldier.
#
Bucky's arm stung from her touch. It had been gentle and he didn't know what gentle felt like anymore. It registered as a scorching, uncomfortable feel. He stared down at her. He had almost forgotten she was with him.
He couldn't be distracted. Not with a present threat.
He turned back to the bus depot across the street. He watched people, tracked what they were doing.
When he had seen enough, he started moving.
There were a few cars parked in a drop off zone, but no one looked over at them as they wove between the vehicles.
He kept his head low to avoid security cameras when they entered the building.
He picked up a brochure with a schedule and scanned it quickly, seeing bus numbers, departure times, and prices. He ignored the prices. They couldn't throw away limited money on tickets.
"Come on," he whispered harshly.
She followed along. Bucky had a moment of thankfulness for the drugs, or their after effects, that were keeping her compliant. A sharp tide of self-disgust followed quickly after the thought. He was no better than Hydra, wanting her submissive.
No better than Hydra? He was Hydra.
The vise started at his temples.
He was in a tank. Muzzled, kept suspended until they needed him. A weapon.
No. He couldn't let the memory overtake him. Not now.
The pain didn't subside, but the memory at least only moved around him like a shadow. It was better than taking over his entire awareness.
Shadows.
He shoved his way past a Hydra handler. Or maybe he was only a traveler in the bus station. It didn't matter. He had to keep enough focus to get them toward a bus without lifting his face toward a camera. And the girl. He couldn't lose the girl in the crowd.
At the far end of the depot there were buses pulled up to the curb.
He eyed the people at the doors, lining up to get on their buses.
He bumped into another man, this one feeling very real as he let out a breath of air in Bucky's face and nearly lost his balance.
Bucky grabbed one arm to keep him upright.
He grabbed the man to pull him from the car. Sitwell. He was a traitor and wouldn't be shown mercy. The car careened as The Soldier hauled Sitwell out—
He quickly let go of the man. The man frowned at him and got some distance, muttering something to himself.
His neck felt like it was on fire, the pain from his temples migrating across his head, radiating into his neck.
Focus.
He turned to the girl and moved his head enough to motion her toward the line of people boarding a bus. She went with him, following his lead in cutting into line in front of a lady looking down at her phone, not noticing them sliding into place.
When the bus door opened, Bucky gave the girl a nudge to get her moving. He kept a firm grip on the tickets that had been in the man's pocket when Bucky bumped into him. It had been easy enough to get the two tickets sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans while his attention was on the strong clasp on his arm. The man and his friend were well behind them in line.
Bucky willed her to take the steps of the bus without incident. She stumbled once, but made it onto the bus. Bucky quickly handed the two tickets to the driver. He needed to get her in a seat before anyone questioned her drugged movements. She moved like her hands and feet weren't entirely hers.
He got her into a seat by the window towards the back of the bus, as far from other passengers as they could make it. He took the seat next to her, stowing the bag at his feet.
By the time the line of people had boarded, and the last man in line was agitatedly patting down his pockets for his missing tickets, it was two minutes past the scheduled departure time. The driver said something sharply to the man and ordered him from the bus.
The man and his friend went down the steps, arguing with one another as the door closed on them.
When the bus let out a long sigh and pulled away from the curb, Bucky finally unclenched his fists. The girl let her head fall against the window with a dull thud. Bucky kept scanning the bus, watching every movement the other passengers made, unable to be anything but a soldier on a mission.
#
Steve moved through the neighborhood that had once been familiar. He was so sure that Bucky would have come back here. He knew Bucky had come here when he fell off the grid with Hydra in the 70s. He might not know The Winter Soldier, but he knew his friend. And the Bucky he knew—the friend he had to believe was under all the programming and torture—would have come back to something familiar.
"Anything?" Sam asked.
Steve shook his head. There wasn't any sign of Bucky. They had moved along the streets, looking over buildings, seeing if any looked like somewhere Bucky could lay low.
All Steve could see, though, wasn't the neighborhood. It was Bucky, looming over him, ready to strike him with a final fatal blow. And then the horror on his face when Steve told him he was with him to the end of the line. That moment in the helicarrier…Steve had thought it saved Bucky. But now he was starting to think it might have destroyed him. How was Bucky supposed to reconcile who he was 90 years ago with what Hydra had made him?
"Over there," Sam said quietly.
A three story house with a sign on the door stating it was condemned stood sandwiched between other houses that weren't in much better shape, but looked to be occupied.
Steve glanced around to make sure no one would be paying attention and approached the house.
The front door was locked. He glanced in the windows and didn't see anything on the ground level.
He jogged back down the steps and ducked between houses. The windows on this side were boarded up. But there was a loose one, on the back side. He pulled it to the side and looked in.
He climbed through, waited for Sam.
His eyes adjusted to the dark and he looked around. Nothing on the ground floor stood out to him. He climbed the stairs.
The second floor had an open doorway. This room's windows weren't entirely boarded up and light came in. An empty water bottle and a couple granola bar wrappers littered the floor.
It could have been any number of homeless drifters or squatters who had left the detritus behind. He knew that. But something told him it was Bucky. This is where Bucky would have gone.
Steve looked around, searching for any sign that would tell him Bucky was still here, or coming back.
Nothing in the wrappers or bottle hinted at anything.
This was pointless. They were in a city of millions of people, looking for one man who had been trained to disappear.
He hated the thought of Bucky on the run, confused if he was still in the shape Steve had last seen him. But, worse than that, he hated thinking of Bucky alone.
#
Bucky looked at the girl. She was still sleeping. Whatever Hydra had done to her was still affecting her. Or she was catching up after being malnourished and exhausted…at least he thought that's what had happened. She had been with him, hadn't she? He had seen her at Hydra. He…he thought he had…
He stared at her. Her sharp jawline and high cheekbones. Long dark hair.
She wasn't going back to Hydra.
He wasn't being taken back. Not alive.
His thoughts back on track, he felt his focus shift, clear. They had to get to safety.
The bus was pulling into a station. They were across the border, out of the States. Canada.
Hydra had reach here. No doubt S.H.I.E.L.D did, too. But maybe no one was looking this far yet.
They had to keep moving.
"Wake up," he said in a low voice. He avoided touching her.
She stirred groggily. He looked to the front of the bus as soon as he knew she was alert enough and getting to her feet.
He started down the aisle of the bus. The rest of the passengers were filing into the depot. There would be a customs counter there, where they would have to show ID to enter the country.
He made sure they were angled away from cameras. He kept his head down. When he veered away from the line moving towards the counter, and agents there, the girl followed.
He positioned himself so she blocked anyone's view of his hand, then reached up and pulled the fire alarm on the wall.
She jolted at the sound and looked around.
"Head down," he said sharply. "Move."
They fell in with the flow of people heading toward the exits. He made sure they were among the first out of the depot, and kept walking. Away from the building, away from the other bus passengers who still needed to make it through customs. Into Canada.
#
Elia was exhausted. And alone. Even with Bucky next to her, she was alone. Because it was the Soldier leading them though Canada. Wary of everyone, one triggering word or move from attacking, pushing on. Constantly moving.
Elia blinked back tears. Her hands hurt. They ached all the way to the bone and wouldn't stop seizing up. But she had to keep moving. If she didn't, she would be left behind and on her own.
She pushed harder to keep up with his fast stride. The ever present backpack on his back held whatever food he had picked up when they had found a grocery store upon their arrival in Winnipeg. Now they were in a different town. He had made sure she had her hat pulled low over her face, then directed her to keep up.
She had no idea where they were going. He had been taking a course that had them blending into crowded cities, then out on the fringes of the wilderness where there were no signs of life.
"There," he said. He nodded toward a motel. They had stayed in an abandoned car in a junkyard last night, him in the driver's seat, where she was sure he hadn't actually slept, and her curled up in the backseat where she had dozed fitfully until he had woke her by opening the door and announcing it was time to move.
After two days of making their way across southern Canada, sleeping on buses, the idea of having a door to close on the outside world was a comfort she hadn't realized was a luxury.
Bucky pulled the backpack off his back. He looked at the cash they had. "Go pay for a room," he said. "Say it's just you staying here."
She looked up at him in alarm. He was leaving her here? He was intimidating— scary even— when he was in Soldier mode like this, focused on a mission and nothing else, but he was still familiar. And a protection against Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D. or whoever it was they were running from.
"You're leaving?" she asked. Her mind spun, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do from here.
He stared at her without emotion. "If they're tracking two Hydra fugitives, it's smarter to not register together."
Her breath eased out of her tight chest. That made sense. She nodded, then his words struck her. Fugitives. She was a criminal?
Bucky looked around them. "Go pay," he said.
Elia nodded.
This didn't look like a motel that would have security cameras, but she tried to shield her face from any angle they may be capturing images from anyway.
The desk clerk didn't look like he cared who was staying in the building as long as they paid.
He took the cash Elia handed him, Canadian dollars Bucky had changed somewhere yesterday, and handed her a key card. He didn't say anything and turned back to the talk show on the small television behind him.
Elia took the key card, then paused. One key. But then she shook herself. They had stayed in the junkyard car and a condemned house together. A motel was no different. And she was guessing they had to guard their dwindling supply of cash.
Outside, Bucky was at the edge of the parking lot. He saw her and moved between the few parked cars to her.
Her hand didn't want to cooperate, so she held the key card awkwardly between bent fingers. She handed it to him.
"Room five," she said.
He strode off in that direction.
When they got to the room, he opened the door and went in, one hand poised near his gun, scanning the room before he went in further and looked behind furniture, opening the closet door and bathroom before his posture relaxed slightly.
Elia went in after him. She sank onto the edge of the bed. It was a strange kind of bliss to not have to fight anymore against muscles that didn't want to cooperate.
Bucky didn't sit. He stood in the corner of the room. It was a posture she had seen him take back when they had been prisoners. When he had been on guard.
Her hands seized up again. She hissed her breath in between her teeth and willed the muscles to relax. They didn't. Tears pricked her eyes.
She looked again to Bucky. He didn't move. He was the soldier she had been trapped with at Hydra.
She blinked quickly, trying to hold back the tears that threatened. She sniffled quietly. She wanted to go home. She wanted her life back like it was before. Before she had been taken by Hydra. Before they had injected her full of drugs and left her with intractable pain and muscle spasms.
There was no box of tissues in this motel room. Nothing but dingy carpeting and worn curtains. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and another tear spilled. Her hands seized up, muscles contracting tightly. She couldn't stop the quiet crying that started, overflowing from days—weeks—months—of confusion and loneliness and fear.
The sound of water running in the bathroom startled her. She looked and Bucky wasn't in his guard position anymore.
He came out of the open bathroom door, water still running.
He stared at her without reaction to her tears. She sniffled again and brought her hands in protectively closer to her.
"Hot water," he said.
"What?" she asked.
"Your hands. Hot water."
Elia eyed him uncertainly. He moved to the side, like he was clearing space for her to go through the bathroom door.
Elia kept an eye on him as she stood, wincing at the extra pain the movement brought. She edged past him to the bathroom.
Hot water poured out of the bathtub faucet, the tub filling with steaming water.
A hot bath.
If she had thought being inside, in a room that isolated the world outside the door was a luxury, the idea of a hot bath was heaven.
She looked back over her shoulder at Bucky. The Soldier stood in the corner of the room again.
She closed the bathroom door.
The air was starting to fill with steam. She wiped at her tears. Ripped a piece of toilet paper from the roll and blew her nose.
When the tub was nearly full, she struggled to turn off the flow of water. Getting it turned off, she shucked her clothing, letting it fall in a pile on the floor.
She stepped into the tub. She couldn't hold back a groan of pure relief as she sank down into the hot water.
She let her hands fall into the heat and immediately the pain started to release its grip.
She let her head fall back against the back of the tub and closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under her closed lids. She swallowed hard against the knot in her throat.
She wanted to go home. That's all she wanted.
She sniffed again. Tried to bite back the tears.
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. She listened to the sounds outside the motel room.
It wasn't like the sounds outside her Hydra cell. She wasn't there anymore. She had to remember that. Remember that this could be so, so much worse.
She tried to focus on that. Focus on the edges of her pain finally dulling. The way her fingers finally cooperated with movement.
She couldn't look back or she'd never stop crying.
#
Steve picked up speed. The steady pounding of his feet on the pavement was in a rhythm with his breath. He didn't notice the fall colors around the Mall.
His ribs hurt, his head throbbed. This was too much after his run in with Bucky. He wasn't fully healed. But he needed to move.
He hadn't found Bucky. Not that he had expected to find him so easily. But he had been so sure that if Bucky was going to ground, it would be back home. Back where they both were from.
He pushed himself harder, ignoring the pain that shot down his leg every time he landed on it.
He had made his peace with being in the wrong time. With not looking back. But that had been when he thought everyone from the past had lived a full life, moved on without him, and been ok.
Bucky had been anything but OK.
He had to find him. He had no idea if Bucky knew where he was. If Bucky knew who he was.
He kept seeing those pictures. Replaying the stories he had read in the file.
The Bucky he knew would never have done that. Any of that. And the Bucky he knew wouldn't be able to forgive himself once he knew what he had done.
He stopped, doubling over, hands on his knees. He had to catch his breath.
His shirt stuck to his back, the cool fall air welcome as it blew over him.
He had to figure out where Bucky would go. Find someone who had seen him.
He had abandoned Bucky once. It didn't matter that he hadn't known Bucky had survived the fall from the train—he hadn't been there to save Bucky when he needed it.
He wasn't going to make that mistake again.
#
Elia stayed in the water until it cooled. And until her tears were under control, pushed down and out of the way with her grief.
She stepped from the water and pulled a thin towel from the towel bar. Her fingers worked better, allowing her to keep from dropping it.
She dried off and pulled her same clothes back on. The only spare set of clothes she had were the fatigues from Hydra. She wasn't putting those on.
She toweled her hair and made an effort to comb it with fingers that were slightly more cooperative.
Feeling almost human for the first time in days…no, in months. She hadn't felt human since Rumlow had taken her.
She opened the bathroom door. The Soldier wasn't standing guard in the corner. Instead, he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
He didn't move at the door opening. No response to Elia moving slowly into the room.
She looked at him closely. He wasn't on guard. He was just not there.
Bucky's eyes were empty.
She had seen this version of him, too. For all the times she had seen him standing guard, she had also seen him waiting. Blank, motionless. Withdrawn into himself until a handler came to activate him.
She worked at the zipper on the backpack until she got it open. She dropped the half used bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion into the bag. Closing the bag again, she hesitantly approached the bed.
"Thank you," she said. He didn't respond. "The heat helped."
Still no response. No movement.
She wondered if he was trapped in his head. If he really was as checked out as he looked, or if he was fighting battles in his mind. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to have silence in her brain. She hoped he had that reprieve.
The sun was already set, the room cast in shadows.
She went to the bed, the side he wasn't sitting on. Her hands fumbled with the polyester spread, but it was still easier to grip it than it would have been before the hot shower.
She slid beneath the sheets. The bed mattress wasn't high quality, but it was softer than the floor she had slept on in New York and the bus seats since. Definitely softer than the hard cot in her Hydra cell.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the memories of Hydra.
The sound of traffic outside was a distant hum. Nearer she could hear Bucky's steady breaths. Slow and even.
She wasn't alone in a cell. She reminded herself of that.
No, she wasn't alone in a cell. She was on the run with a trained assassin. She was a fugitive.
She tossed over to her other side. Why was this mattress so hard to get comfortable on? She thought after months without a mattress, even a bargain motel mattress should feel like sleeping on a cloud.
She shifted again.
Were they just going to keep moving? From motel to motel? Forever?
The mattress springs squeaked under her and she made an effort to stop fidgeting.
She opened her eyes and saw Bucky's still form on the edge of the bed. Still motionless.
She tried again to get comfortable, but it was hopeless.
Finally, she pushed off the covers and got out of bed. No reaction from Bucky. There was an extra blanket folded on the top shelf of the closet. She got that and took one of the thin pillows from the bed.
She stretched out on the floor with a sigh of relief. The unyielding surface was familiar. And that made it comfortable.
She pulled the blanket over her and closed her eyes to the sound of Bucky's constant steady breaths.
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