from_the_outside | [ WWII AU ] a ghost story

"Hey, neighbor." Steve's own smile is a little strained, he knows, but he's certain she'll forgive him for it. "Laundry night, huh?"

She's drilled him in operational security when it comes to keeping her cover in the building, but no one should bat an eye at this.

"You know, I was just thinking of making a cup of coffee. Want one?"

"You know, that sounds great, but..."

She shrugs, making a show of her basket of clean clothes. "I really should fold these right away. But I've got a decent coffee maker, if you'd like to come keep me company."

"I won't say no, if you're sure I wouldn't be in the way." It's as sincere as anything. Stressed or not, wanting her opinion or not, she might have been looking forward to a quiet night and he's got no right to upset that.

"I'm sure." Over the last two years, she's gotten to know Steve as well as she's ever known anybody, and these days the slightest shift to his expression might as well be him yelling at the top of his lungs.

He seems tense. And coffee isn't exactly a code – or, not an official one – but it does tend to signify when one of them needs to talk. She gives him a slightly arch look and lifts her basket, illustrating her lack of free hands. "If you could get the door – ?"

"You bet." He opens the door and goes ahead into her apartment so he can hold it for her.

He's still not exactly sure how much the cozy little apartment reflects her preferences instead of 'Kate Newton,' but it's nice anyway. "Want me to put the coffee on?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

She heads to the couch and sets the basket down, then does her usual sweep, checking to ensure her apartment is still secure.

It is, so she wanders to the kitchen door and leans against the frame, arms crossed, all Sharon even in Kate's pink scrubs. "What's wrong?"

He's familiar enough with her kitchen by now to be at ease in it. Steve searches out the coffee and filters, runs water in the pot, and sets it to brewing before he turns around to face her.

"It's just been a heck of a day." Frustration paints his words. "You'd think by now Fury'd know me well enough to trust me, right?"

"As much as he trusts anybody." With Fury, that's not always saying a lot, but –

She frowns at him. "Is this about the mission? Did something happen?"

"Which one? The one I thought I was leading, or the secret one he tasked Nat with under my nose?" Steve braces both hands flat against the countertop and orders himself to breathe.

"Ah."

She levers herself off the doorframe and comes into the kitchen, then nocks her hip against the counter and leans down to catch his eye. "He had Nat multitask and didn't tell you."

"Exactly." He glances up at her. "A good team doesn't work like that, Sharon. At least it never has for me."

Nat can hold the concepts of being on a team and being on a solo mission in her head at the same time without issue. Steve's way of thinking is a little less... flexible.

Sharon nods, thoughtful. "Did you talk to Fury about it when you got back?"

"Better believe it. I'm just not sure it helped." He sighs and turns around to lean back against the counter, rather than on it.

"I just don't think we see the world the same way." Especially not after seeing the hangar for Project Insight. The very thought still sickens him. "And I don't know what to do about it."

He gives her a rueful look. "And here I am dumping all of this on you without even asking how your day went. Sorry."

"It's okay. I wanted to hear about the mission anyway." She gives him a crooked smile as he straightens. "And you never know. Fury actually does hear us when we talk – he just pretends not to listen."

Steve's much too valuable an agent to argue with or lose, so she's willing to bet it might actually have helped quite a bit. "But, yeah. You definitely don't see the world the same way."

Sharon nudges him with an elbow, friendly and fond. "Most of the time, that's a good thing. SHIELD needs checks and balances like any other organization."

"Yeah. It does," he says, a little grimly. "I guess I just wish I was sure I was making a difference. The right one."

He blows out a breath and returns her smile as best he can. "Like I said, it's been a tough day."

She gives him a sympathetic glance. "Fury can be a lot," she agrees.

Is he making the right difference? It's hard to tell from this close. She thinks so. But then, she believes Steve can't but make the right difference.

The coffee maker beeps and she turns to take down a pair of mugs. "How was the mission itself? Did it go okay?"

"It did. We got the hostages out safely," he tells her, lifting the coffeepot to pour into the mugs she's readying. "So that was good."

He grimaces, but adds, "And I guess Nat got the intel she was looking for, so that's good too. Probably."

"Probably," she teases, but lightly. After all this time together, they move around her kitchen with the ease of long practice: she goes around him to the fridge to get milk; he fills the mugs and hands her the shaker of cinnamon sugar she likes to use.

She's not sure at what point Steve started feeling like family, but she's grateful as hell for it. "Do you know what the intel was for? Or what it was?"

“I’m not sure. SHIELD intel, I know that much.”

Steve lifts his mug for a sip and frown down into it. “Fury said he was worried I wouldn’t be comfortable.”

Edited 2023-05-07 13:24 (UTC)

Sharon sets the milk back in the fridge, considering that. "Fury's not famous for caring about people's feelings," she observes, "except for how he can use them to get what he wants. Sounds to me like he thought you might dig in your heels."

“That doesn’t make me feel good about it,” Steve points out. “Because if he’s right about that, then that means that maybe there’s something I should be uncomfortable with.”

The image of the three helicarriers floats across his mind again. How could Fury think something like that was a good idea? Is it, and Steve’s just too out of touch to realize? Has the world changed that much?

She comes to wrap her hand warmly at his elbow, coaxing. "C'mon."

Steve's never quite been sure about Fury, or SHIELD, she knows. She's grateful he's stuck with it this long, even though she knows at least part of it is because he's not sure what else to do with himself. "If we're going to talk about dealing with Fury, we may as well sit down and get comfortable."

He makes a face at her for her choice of words, but leans a little into her shoulder anyway as she takes his arm. He’s grateful nearly every day that she’s a part of his new life, a friend and someone he can count on.

“Okay. Sharon?” he adds. “Thanks.”

She winks over at him and nudges his shoulder with her own, affectionate. "It's cool," she tells him, teasing. "I'd want to come talk to me about it, too."

"Well, you're pretty smart," he teases back, as he ambles into the living room with her. "And it's nice spending time with you. You know, we haven't done takeout in a while. Want me to pick up something tomorrow?"

"That sounds great."

She wrinkles her nose at him as she lets go of his elbow and curls into her usual seat on the couch. "Ready to finally try Thai food?"

"If you want," he says. "I'm still not sure about this whole coconut milk in pasta thing - sort of pasta, anyway - but okay, I'll give it a try."

He settles on the other side of the couch, coffee cradled loosely between his hands, and looks over at her.

"So."

"So."

She sips at her own coffee, then lowers it so she can study him. "How worried are you? Really?"

"Pretty worried," he admits. "It's not just the mission. There's some other stuff, classified stuff, that I just learned about, too. I don't like it, Sharon. I don't like it at all."

She frowns at classified. Her security clearance is pretty high, but if it's not high enough for this...

And she's learned to trust Steve's gut on matters of morality. They've had more than one debate on the role of SHIELD in the world, but she always comes out of those conversations with a renewed sense that SHIELD can only be better if he's there, questioning things, making them question themselves. "I don't like that Fury's keeping you in the dark," she tells him. "It smacks of not wanting to deal with pushback."

But she's not exactly in Nick's inner circle, these days. What are you up to, Fury?

He sighs, long and slow. “To be fair,” he admits, scrupulously, “he was the one who told me about it. Earlier. When I showed up to confront him over the mission stuff.”

Steve meets her eyes. “I gave him my honest opinion. I don’t think he liked hearing it, but I’m not going to lie to save his feelings. Not about something as important as this.”

If he could tell her, he would. But she has enough now to try and force an answer out of Nick the next time she sees him. "You shouldn't," she confirms. "I know you didn't join up to act as Nick Fury's conscience, but it's good for him to have you push him on the calls he makes."

“Someone needs to,” he agrees. “But if he doesn’t listen… I don’t know. I can’t stand by and pretend I’m okay with things, if they’re wrong.”

His expression is truly rueful as he glances at her. “I’ve never been good at that, not really.”

"I know, Steve."

He's a good man. The best man she knows. And as much as she loves SHIELD, she knows he sees some things more clearly than SHIELD ever can. "What can I do to help? Want me to talk to Nat, get the scoop?"

“I don’t know if she even knows it.” He takes a swallow of his coffee.

“I should probably talk to her again myself, now that I’ve cooled off a little. I was pretty mad at her, but she was just following Fury’s orders.” Steve looks up at her. “If you do talk to her before I do, maybe you could let her know I know that.”

"I will," she promises. "And I bet she knows already."

Sharon smiles over at him. "She likes working with you, you know. Even though you're so different from each other."

“I like working with her too. Most of the time.” Steve scowls, but there’s no heat in it. “Even if she keeps trying to set me up on dates.”

That makes her laugh. "She's a busybody," Sharon points out, amused. "It's a good quality in a spy."

Her grin toys across her lips. "Hasn't sold you on anyone yet, huh?"

“Not yet, no. But she’s determined.”

She’s also suggested more than once that he ask Sharon out, and hadn’t seemed convinced by his denial, which isn’t helped by the fact that he can’t really explain to her why.

“I think she’s taking it as a personal challenge.”

"Oh, you're in for it now," Sharon tells him, laughing. "She's like a dog with a bone. But she just wants you to be happy."

She reaches to pat his knee. "So do I."

And so would Aunt Peggy. She doesn't quite think her aunt is the reason why Steve has resisted getting back into dating – although she's certainly part of it – but it's not like she, herself, hasn't spent the last two years focusing on, well... other things.

So she gets it.

He catches her hand and squeezes, careful as always to keep his grip gentle. She does, he knows, just like he wants her to be happy, but it’s complicated for them both in so many ways.

“Yeah, well, there’s no rush,” is all he says.

Her smile gentles at that and turns a little crooked as she squeezes his hand back. She could ask Nat to lay off him, she supposes... but her friend might get the wrong idea if she tried. "No rush," she agrees.

"It's not like you aren't plenty busy already."

Edited 2023-05-07 16:05 (UTC)

He huffs out a wry breath of laughter. "Just a little."

Steve thinks of the conversation he'd had with Sam Wilson earlier and opens his mouth to tell her about it, then stops, listening intently to the faint sound of big band music.

Whatever he's about to say goes by the wayside, though she's not sure why, for a moment. His hearing is better than hers, but after a second, she hears it, too, and frowns at him.

"Did you leave your record player on?"

"No. I didn't." He discards the coffee onto the table as he gets to his feet. "Someone's in my apartment."

She sets her own mug down and reaches under the coffee table, where she'd stashed her Kahr and a walkie-talkie. Checking the load on the pistol, she goes to the door, standing to the side and waiting to open it until Steve's ready.

When she gets the nod from him, she silently turns the knob and pulls the door towards herself, then follows him, silent as a cat, down the hall.

He doesn't bother trying to tell her to stay behind. She's good, he knows it, and backup's not a bad idea.

Steve listens at the door just to be certain, but there's no question the music's coming from his apartment, and it's a sure thing that he hadn't started it. Whoever's inside'll expect him to come through the door, and is likely to have trapped it or be listening for the squeak of the hinges when it opens - a squeak he'd left in place on purpose to alert him, if he ever needed it.

Steve tips his head to the hallway window instead and slides the casement open. He takes a careful look outside just to make sure the ledge is wide enough for her as well, then makes his way out and over to his own window.

Sharon edges out along the ledge after him, one hand on the wall and the other keeping her Kahr at the ready. His safety us her priority, regardless of the fact that she's letting him go ahead of her. After all this time, they know how to work together and around each other, and she'll be damned if she doesn't do her duty.

The music is stronger from here, especially when Steve slides the window gently open. She waits for him to enter, landing softly, then follows him inside.

He waits for her to join him, then ducks into the hallway and against the far wall, claiming his shield in a single swift movement as he does. Cautiously, he moves along the wall toward where it opens out into the living room, hyperaware of any sign of movement or trouble.

He clears the corner with a quick scan and spots a figure sitting in the dark in the armchair next to the stereo system. Steve's eyes narrow as he recognizes Fury, and he lets himself relax a little and leans against the wall to signal Sharon things aren't what they'd thought.

It doesn't do anything to help his annoyance with the man, though. "I don't remember giving you a key."

It's a quick flash of inputs – Steve getting the shield, her back pressed against the wall, her Kahr in her hands and at the ready, Steve relaxing. She lowers the Kahr, but doesn't put it away, skirting the corner with a swift, smooth step.

Fury's one-eyed glance tracks to her, then back to Steve. "You really think I'd need one?"

Sharon scowls at him and lets her Kahr point toward the floor as Fury goes on. "My wife kicked me out."

Edited 2023-05-07 17:17 (UTC)

"I didn't know you were married," he says, as dry as he can make it. All the stuff Fury was saying earlier about trust, and now he pulls a stunt like this. Even as the thought presents itself, Fury's admitting it. "There's a lot of things you don't know about me."

Steve sighs. Maybe this is the only way the other man knows how to hold out an olive branch. He relaxes further and comes the rest of the way into the room, reaching for the light switch as he does. If they're going to have a real talk, they're going to need light, and something to drink, and a commitment to honesty on both sides. "I know, Nick," says. "That's the problem."

The lamp flicks on, mercilessly illuminating the side of Fury's face and the damage he's taken in what must have been a hell of a fight. Steve stares in shock, but before he can get a word out, Fury makes a sharp gesture for silence and reaches to turn off the light once more.

Edited 2023-05-07 17:26 (UTC)

She stops herself from moving toward her boss with ruthless determination, but shock is an icicle stabbing into her gut. What the hell happened to him?

Nick glances between them, then types out a message on his phone. She can see the way he's laboring to do even that, as he finishes and turns his screen so they can see. Ears everywhere.

Which they already know. She and Steve chat in her apartment because his is bugged; bugs that Nick himself had ordered.

But if he's worried about who might be listening in...

"I'm sorry to have to do this," Nick continues, typing out another message. "But I had no place else to crash."

He turns the phone again, and this time his eye meets Sharon's, something bitter and sorrowful and furious in it. Which she can understand, when she reads his message and her whole world stops cold.

SHIELD compromised.

SHIELD compromised. His voice sounds dim and distant in his own ears, and he's just barely able to keep it level for the sake of not alerting anyone who might be eavesdropping. "Who else knows about your wife?"

He can't look at Sharon. This is a disaster. Fury pushes himself to his feet with a soft grunt and turns the phone back around as he starts toward them.

you and me

"Just my friends," he says, tipping his head toward them.

Her breath comes fast and shallow as her mind races. SHIELD, compromised. What's the extent? Nat, Maria Hill – her friends and colleagues, how many of them are in danger?

She can't look at it too closely. Her career, her life, is splintering and falling apart around her, but Fury's here. Steve's here. The three of them can work together, they can find allies. Fight back. "Is that what we are?" she hears Steve say, challenging even now, and suddenly she wonders if this is happening now because of the talk he and Fury had earlier.

Maybe Steve wasn't supposed to know about whatever it was Fury shared with him.

The time it had taken to disperse the team after the target escaped into the labyrinthine systems under the city had given the target enough of a head start that the Winter Soldier hadn't been able to catch up with him until he entered the civilian building. Storming it would draw more attention than desired, the kind of attention that can't be as easily explained away as a fatal conflict between a Black man and the D.C. police due to an unfortunate case of mistaken identity.

It won't matter, in the end. After studying the building from every angle, the Winter Soldier determines the most likely apartment for the target to have taken shelter in. He can't see the man through any of the windows, but the target will have to move eventually. He waits patiently through the rest of the afternoon into the early evening, through the fall of darkness, and keeps his rifle trained on the building.

His eyebrows rise when a blond man crawls out a window and into another that leads inside the apartment he's watching, followed by a blonde woman with a pistol in one hand. The Winter Soldier trains every bit of his attention on the apartment, tracking any hint of movement through his sights.

He still can't see the target, but he doesn't need to. The blond man's visible through the window, leaning against the wall and talking to someone. It's not the woman, because he sees her move past the man and out of view in a different direction. The Winter Soldier triangulates the most likely position and angle, and waits for the right moment.

The blond man's gaze changes, shifting higher as his conversation partner stands, and a slight flicker of movement shifts at the edge of the field visible through the window. It's all he needs.

The bullet slams through the wall, and he watches as the blond jerks back half a step and as the target falls forward into view and collapses to the floor.

Edited 2023-05-07 18:29 (UTC)

"That's up to you," Nick says, and then the wall behind him explodes as three shots smash through brick, insulation, and drywall, straight into him. "Nick!"

She doesn't hear the word as it rips from her throat. He falls, and she runs to him, training her Kahr on the wall to cover as Steve drags Fury into the other room. No other shots come, but every nerve is on high alert as she backtracks to join them, then falls to her knees at Fury's side. "Nick," she says, more urgently, checking him over as she reaches for her radio, trying to get a response.

A second later, she thumbs the radio and brings it to her lips. "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive. I need EMTs."

He'd reacted on instinct, dragging Fury out of the line of fire, even while his mind whirls with confusion. Someone had shot him through the wall - but who? How? Why?

Fury presses something into his hand, rasping a warning for him to not trust anyone, and Steve steps back as Sharon rushes to him, checking his injuries and calling for help.

The dispatch operator responds, asking if they have the shooter's location, which jerks the world around him back into sharp focus. Steve scans the room, looking out the window, and sees a glint of metal on the opposite roof. His jaw sets.

"Tell them I'm in pursuit."

Glass shatters as he leaps through it, smashing his own window and the one in the building across the way with his shield as he lands.

A crash of glass and then Steve's gone, going after whoever it was who could target Fury through the wall.

It shouldn't have been possible, but she can't think about it right now. She rips the bottom of her scrubs and does her best to staunch the bleeding as Dispatch gives her the ETA on emergency response and continues asking her questions, many of which she simply can't answer.

And all through it, her mind rings with Nick's warning: SHIELD compromised.

SHIELD is coming to assist. But can she trust them?

He holds position, trying to confirm the kill, watching through the window as the blond man drags the target out of sight while the blonde woman covers them with her weapon before falling back to join them. As intent as he is on the scene inside, it's easy for him to see the moment when the blond man steps back into view and spots him.

The Winter Soldier quits his position at a run. It niggles at him to leave the kill not entirely confirmed, but from the way the target had fallen all three shots hit, and the probability is high that if he's not dead already he'll bleed out shortly. If he doesn't, the Winter Soldier will make another attempt. In the meantime, it would be far worse for operational security and Command's interests for him to engage.

He races along the roof toward the far side where it gives way to a lower level and leaps down, tucking into a roll and coming up on his feet without losing momentum. Glass shatters behind him, but he keeps going, until he hears the soft, hissing sound of something being flung at him from behind.

(the shield)

He reacts by instinct alone, catching the metal shield in his left hand with ease, and holds it at arm's length while he studies the blond man over the top of it with a cool, distant flicker of professional appreciation for his skill.

In the next second, he flings the shield back at the other man as hard as he can, aiming for center mass, and uses the moment of distraction to leap from the edge of the roof.

Edited 2023-05-07 20:02 (UTC)

By the time Steve returns, the EMTs have filled his apartment and Sharon is off to one side, reporting to Rumlow. He watches her with sympathy that feels a little performative – they've never quite meshed, her and Rumlow – as she tells him what happened.

Or a version of it, anyway. Rumlow isn't anywhere near the security clearance needed to know about how she and Steve are acquainted. As far as he knows, she's been undercover next door this whole time. "I heard the shots and entered the apartment to investigate," she tells him.

She'll have to remember to break down Steve's door later, so no one will question her story. Right now, no one's paying attention to it. "Upon entrance, I observed Fury down on the ground, with Captain Rogers nearby."

Glancing up as Steve re-enters, she gives him a warning glance. "Captain. Did you apprehend the shooter?"

"No. He was too fast. Strong, too," he says, grim. The force the assassin had put into throwing the shield had hit him hard enough to slide him back a couple of steps. It shouldn't have been possible.

He nods to Rumlow and looks between both him and Sharon. "How's Director Fury?"

"Not looking good," Rumlow tells him, and Sharon fights to keep her expression neutral. Nick. "We're getting ready to airlift him. He'll need emergency surgery if he's gonna make it."

"He'll make it," Sharon says, short.

He nods. "I'll go with him." Don't trust anyone, Fury had said. He'd been running for his life, coming to Steve both to warn him and hoping for help, and Steve had failed him.

"The assassin could try again."

"I'll report to Secretary Pierce."

The buzz of EMTs around Fury shifts, and she glances over as one raises his head to call out to Steve. "Sir? We're ready to move him."

"Take him. I'm right behind you," he tells the EMT, before turning to Sharon.

"Thanks for your assistance, Agent Thirteen." He'd gotten her message earlier, loud and clear, but he'd have said this even if he'd only known her as Kate, he thinks. Probably.

Then again, maybe not; if he'd thought she'd been lying to him all this time, he'd have been pretty pissed, but no one else needs to know that.

She nods, almost curt. In the rush around them, hopefully no one's seeing the way her fingers tremble. "It's my job, Captain," she tells him, then allows herself a glance at Nick as the EMTs wheel him out. "Good luck. And..."

It's not standard procedure, but his team is common knowledge, and even Rumlow knows she knows Natasha. "I'll contact Agent Romanoff. Have her follow you for backup."

"Thanks." Don't trust anyone. That might mean Nat too, but he can't think about that right now.

"I'll keep up the sweep with the rest of the team. Clear the area, make sure it's secure," Rumlow offers, and Steve nods to him. "Good. Let me know what you find. I'll be at the hospital."

He turns to follow the EMTs out, the secret weight of the drive Fury had given him heavy as a stone in his pocket.

* * * * *

She doesn't understand how everyone can be acting like everything is normal. There's a slight pall over the Triskelion, but she'd have expected the death of the Director to hit SHIELD like an atom bomb.

Instead, it means a quiet meeting with Pierce while every nerve is on edge. She passes Steve in the hall and can't quite keep from letting her glance linger on him just a little longer than would be expected. "Captain Rogers," she says, smoothly, and receives a brusque greeting in return.

Nat is the only one who seems as shaken as Sharon feels – not that they've been able to communicate by anything other than a few quick calls and texts. Nat only asks her to confirm a few details Steve had mentioned about the shooter and offers nothing in return, which makes Sharon think her friend may just be considering going after the man herself.

If that's the case, she could use back up.

But before Sharon can leave, she's summoned, along with everyone else from at least ten floors, to the command pool, where she folds her arms as Agent Sitwell enters. "Eyes here," he tells the agents, who all give him their attention. "Whatever your op is, bury it. This is Level One. Contact DOT. All traffic lights in the district go red. Shut all runways at BWI, IAD and Reagan. All security cameras in the city go through this monitor, right here. Scan all open sources. Phones, computers, PDAs, whatever. If someone tweets about this guy, I want to know about it."

What? A chill runs through her, and she glances around at the other agents, some of whom are already on their phones with contacts, obeying Sitwell's orders.

Is this it? What Fury had meant? Is there anyone in this room she can trust? "With all due respect – "

She lifts her chin and speaks clearly, her glance steady on Sitwell. "If SHIELD is conducting a manhunt for Captain America, we deserve to know why."

"Because he lied to us." He'd had a feeling that Sitwell wouldn't be able to handle this on his own. Pierce moves into the room with all the confidence the moment demands, careful to make sure his expression shows nothing more than determination flavored with disappointment and a hint of grief.

It's even true. He's going to miss Fury, but the man had been asking too many questions, and the cause is too important for him to have risked letting him continue, especially after he started becoming suspicious of Insight.

"Captain Rogers has information regarding the death of Director Fury. He refused to share it." He scans the room, meeting gaze after gaze, making note of anyone who looks like they might argue. More than one looks stunned and off balance, but of them all, it's the very effective Agent Thirteen who'd had the courage to speak out. He directs his next remarks to her. "As difficult as it is to accept, Captain America is a fugitive from SHIELD."

It isn't difficult. It's damn impossible to accept, unless she also accepts that her beloved SHIELD isn't what she believes it to be. She meets Pierce's gaze and wonders, suspicion sharpening: is he the enemy?

Because Steve isn't. But no one else seems willing to back her up on that. "How do we know he's withholding information, sir?"

Her shoulders feel painfully tight. "I've come to know Captain Rogers over my assignment. He's usually pretty forthcoming."

"I asked him myself." It's only natural she'd feel responsible for her protectee, he figures, and there's no question that Steve Rogers is an inspirational sort.

Still, she'd been right there on the scene after Nick Fury went down. She'd been the first to respond, trying to save his life. Had she seen something? Had he said something?

Pierce shakes his head. "I gave him every opportunity to explain. I even warned him how important this was, how much we needed his help."

Edited 2023-05-07 22:47 (UTC)

He'd attacked Steve, she realizes. The alarms she'd heard before – Steve had been going in to speak with Pierce right after her. He must have said something – or not said something Pierce wanted to hear – and they'd gone after him.

Fury was right. SHIELD is compromised.

And she's standing in the middle of an army of agents.

A thrill of adrenaline threads through her, but she stands her ground, planting her fists on her hips the way she used to as a child, unconsciously emulating her great-aunt. "Steve Rogers is a reasonable man," she argues. "We're treating him like the enemy."

She has to get word to Steve. She has to get out of here. "He knows me, now. If you call off the hunt, sir, maybe I can get him to come back in. Quietly."

Edited 2023-05-07 22:53 (UTC)

"Every second we delay increases the risk that Nick Fury's murderer gets away with it. No. We can't afford to wait."

Pierce shakes his head and looks around the room. "No one hopes more than I do that this is all some kind of misunderstanding. But in order to answer that question, we need to find Captain Rogers. Now." It's an order, and the agents in the room take it as such. As they start moving, he turns his regard on Thirteen.

"Agent, a word, if you wouldn't mind?"

She minds. But she leaves her position and comes to fall in with him, her expression neutral despite the way her mind is spinning. "I don't mean to be insubordinate, sir," she says, as she comes close to him. "Director Fury... he recruited me. I worked with him for a long time."

"I understand. It's been a difficult day for all of us." He studies her carefully. "But I hope you can see the position we're in. Can I count on you, Agent?"

"Yes, sir."

She lets her tone become a little more fervent. "SHIELD can always count on me."

"Glad to hear it." He moves a little further to the side of the room, near the exit, tipping his head to indicate she should accompany him. "Now. You suggested you thought Captain Rogers might listen to you?"

"We spoke most days."

She walks alongside him and pitches her voice a little lower. "Yes, he knew me as my cover, but we chatted. Got along. We were... friendly. And after last night – "

Her voice threatens to lock on her; she powers relentlessly through. "He knows I'm SHIELD, but he knew me as Kate first."

"Personal connections. That'd mean a lot to a man like him," he agrees.

Something to think about, for certain.

"Do what you can to talk him in, Agent. If you've got a way to reach out to him, now'd be the time."

"Yes, sir."

She has to get a warning to Steve. She has to keep him the hell away from the Triskelion. "Anything else, sir?"

"Not at the moment." He checks his watch; he's about to be late for his call with the rest of the Council.

"Clock's ticking. Good luck, Agent Thirteen."

Pierce nods, dismissing her, and leaves the room with quick strides.

She waits until he's gone, then goes back to the pool, where other agents are already working on the screens and at the desks, Sitwell pacing nearby, watching them. She makes her way directly to him, adrenaline coursing through her veins. "Agent," she says, as she comes up to him. "I need to go back to the apartments. There may be something there we missed last night."

He considers her, but the slight note of submission she'd put into her voice seems to do the trick; Sitwell always had liked being in charge. "Fine," he says. "Report in when you have something."

Sharon nods, then makes her way out of the room – the opposite direction from Pierce.

Just in case.

* * * * * * *

Everything that's happened brought more questions than answers, but hopefully they'll find some of those at Lehigh. Steve concentrates on driving the borrowed truck, keeping his cap pulled low at Nat's instruction to avoid being caught by traffic cameras.

"It'll be easier once we're on the back roads," she assures him. "It might take us a little longer, but it'll be safer."

"Whatever works." He glances over at her, then back at the road. "You're sure that phone of yours is secure?"

She shrugs. "As sure as I am of anything."

"You realize that's not much comfort," Steve points out. Nat shrugs again. "Would you rather I lied to you?"

"No. I wouldn't." He sighs, but there's really no way around it. They have to risk it. "See if you can get a hold of Sharon. She needs to know what's going on."

She's running hard up against the edge of when even she has to admit she needs to call in or rouse suspicion, but she hasn't found anything yet. Steve isn't answering his phone and neither is Nat – both good signs, she tells herself – and there's nothing in his apartment when she does a sweep. Even tracking Steve's race across the rooftop yields no results but shattered glass and a few bootprints that offer no answers.

But she can't go back to the Triskelion.

She's climbing back down the edge of the neighboring building when her phone goes off, the caller ID showing a number she doesn't recognize. Sharon hits accept and lifts the phone to her ear. "Who is this?"

"You don't sound happy to hear from me," Nat murmurs, putting the phone on speaker so Steve can hear as well. "Am I interrupting?"

A sigh of relief escapes her, and she looks down so no one will be able to read her lips. "Nat."

Hurriedly, she slips back into her own building and goes up the stairs as quickly as she dares. "As it happens, I've been given a brand new assignment. And so has everyone else."

"Everyone?" Nat asks, archly. Steve thinks he sees a flicker of dismay in her eyes, but he can't be sure. "That sounds important. What assignment?"

He doesn't wait for her to answer. "Are you okay?" he interrupts.

This time, she can't help the relief from flooding her voice. "Steve."

For a moment, she leans her hand against the stairwell wall, her head bowed, just to take a breath before she keeps going. "I'm okay. Hang on. Let me get secure."

A moment later, she's heading into her own apartment and locking the door behind her. "Secretary Pierce has instituted a division-wide manhunt," she tells them. "Every agent is looking for you, Steve. He told us you lied to him, that you withheld information. You need to get out of DC."

He ignores the sudden interest in Nat's glance as she listens to Sharon's reaction, and focuses instead on what she's telling them. "Guess he needed a reason to justify sending STRIKE after me," he says, dryly. "Can't say I'm all that surprised. He really wanted to know why Fury came looking for me."

Steve blows out a rough breath. "Don't worry. We're safe, for now. But we know who killed Fury. We've also got a lead on why, and so we're trying to find out what he wants."

She swallows her first impulse, which is to tell them to head to the mountain house – or, hell, to hop a plane and go to France, where Sharon owns a little cottage way out in the middle of nowhere, a perfect place to hide out – and focuses on Steve's intel. "Who?"

He hadn't had any details last night, only that the guy was fast and strong. "Why?"

"They call him the Winter Soldier." Steve's already heard this, so she doesn't need to worry about his reaction. Instead, Nat concentrates on keeping her voice as natural as she can so that she doesn't give everything away, knowing that Sharon will be able to read anything wrong in a way that Steve can't yet. "Remember the assassin who shot through me in Odessa?"

"You're kidding."

There's something in Nat's voice she doesn't like, but she can't quite pinpoint what it is. "I guess that explains the whole 'shooting people through walls' thing."

Her thoughts race. "Does that mean... SHIELD's been compromised by Russia?"

"It sure does. He's an unbelievably good shot," Nat says. "Sharon, I told Steve this already, but he's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. At least. And he's impossible to find. I know."

She draws a slightly shaky breath, and is glad when Steve steps in before she can reveal any more than she already has. "Whoever it is, what they want has something to do with the information Nat brought back from the Lemurian Star. Fury slipped me a drive with the contents."

Edited 2023-05-08 01:16 (UTC)

"Great."

A lethal assassin who can't be found, and SHIELD eating itself from the inside out. She blows out a breath and forces herself to focus on what they have right now. "Could you access it? The drive?"

"Not entirely. It's protected by some kind of advanced encryption. I couldn't crack it in the time we had," Nat admits.

"You got farther than I would have," Steve points out. "Besides, we got a little. Enough to go looking for more."

He scans traffic, then glances at the phone as if he could see Sharon through it. "Listen. Be careful, okay? We'll check in as soon as we know anything else. Don't give them any reason to suspect you."

"I can slow them down," she tells him. It goes fully against what he's just asked her, but she can't just sit here while her whole life comes apart around her ears. Maybe she can't be with him and Nat, but she can still do something.

"Point them in the wrong direction. Give you as much time as possible."

"Right now you're the only connection we have to what's going on inside SHIELD," Steve counters. "I need you to keep your head down so we have a way to respond once we find out what got Fury killed."

In his voice, she hears not only her friend and colleague, but the man she'd first met in an Army camp thousands of miles and multiple decades from here.

("If your cover gets blown I'd expect you'll be surrounded by a bunch of unfriendly guys with guns.")

Since then, he'd promised to watch her back and she his, both of them trying to take care of each other in the absence of the one person who managed to take care of them both. "Your call, Cap," she murmurs, relenting.

"If I don't hear from you beforehand, I'll check in at 0600 tomorrow. Okay?"

"Copy," Steve agrees. "But we'll try to check in before then. Keep your eyes open."

He glances at Nat, who gives him a smile that's more than a little mischievous for some reason. "What he said," she confirms. "Stay out of trouble, okay? I think we've got some catching up to do over martinis some time soon, and I want to hear all the news."

"Will do," she promises, and huffs a small, amused breath at Nat's teasing. "Then I guess you better stay safe," she tells her friend.

"Both of you. Watch each other's backs." Her fingers tighten on her phone, but she makes herself say it: "Talk soon."

"We will." It's as much of a promise as he can make, and he puts all the confidence into his voice that he can. "You stay safe, too. We'll call as soon as we can."

Nat disconnects the call, then gives him a bright smile. "Soooo," she says, drawing it out, and Steve gives her an exasperated look. "Don't start."

She lowers the phone and finds herself looking at the coffee table, where the mugs she and Steve had been drinking from just the night before still sit. Slipping her phone into the back pocket of her pants, she goes to collect the mugs and wash them while she puts another pot of coffee on. As she works, she mentally drafts the report she'll send.

Keeping her head down. Being the contact Steve will need at SHIELD... or what's left of it.

Two targets, Level Six. I want confirmed death in ten hours. It's a short clock, but he's worked shorter. The fastest way to manage is to draw the targets out and make them come to him.

From the now-familiar rooftop, the Winter Soldier studies the third file photo he'd been given, then the window of the apartment below. He watches for several minutes, making sure she's alone, before he leaps to the roof of her building and begins to descend the wall.

About half the pot of coffee is gone, and she's spent more time on the phone with Sitwell than she'd ever wanted. Steve had gone to ground, she'd told him. She'd continue to try and make contact, while tracing what tracks she can.

Currently, that means walking through her apartment, her Kahr snug at the small of her back and her phone in her hand, as the city lights up around her.

Steve and Nat haven't called. But they will. They will.

She doesn't seem to be able to sit still. The only problem that presents is if she notices his presence before he makes his way inside, and that's not much of a problem. But since it'll make things more convenient if he has full access to the apartment for a time, he moves as silently as he can until he's balanced on the narrow ledge outside her bedroom window.

He doesn't see any of the signs that would signal an advanced security system, and thus doesn't hesitate to pull the window open and drop to the floor inside.

In the living room, she flips the tv on to a news channel, scanning the chyrons like she's scanning social media for any hint either that Steve and Nat have been spotted or that they've been engaged.

There's nothing. And there's nothing from SHIELD, either; just a series of check-ins, each of which says the same thing: no contact made.

The television comes on in the other room. Good. It will mask any sounds he makes and distract her.

Silently, he stalks along the wall to the bedroom door and waits there, listening, before he moves into the hallway and toward the living room. He waits just outside it for a moment, trying to determine from shadows and sounds and shapes against the light where she is in the room, then breaks from cover and surges into the room and straight toward her, left hand raised.

There's no warning. All of a sudden, a shadow detaches from her hallway entry and charges her like a nightmare made solid.

She acts on instinct. Her Kahr is snug at the small of her back; she reaches for it even as she throws herself at an angle across the room, trying to give herself some space. She squeezes the trigger; once, twice. The Kahr barks in the small space.

Anyone else, she'd have hit twice, center mass. But he's so damn fast, faster than anyone she's ever seen.

He deflects both shots with his left hand, ignoring the ricochet, and is on her in the next moment. The Winter Soldier strikes hard toward her gut with his right hand, aiming to rob her of breath and resistance both, and slaps the weapon away with his left.

He hits her like a runaway truck, and in the next second she's doubled over, gasping, the Kahr skittering away from her across the floor.

Down, but not out. She twists and strikes up with the heel of her hand, aiming for his throat, then allows her body to continue the twist so she can slam her elbow in toward his solar plexus. He's wearing body armor, she realizes, and he's taller, heavier, faster, stronger.

But she fights back. It's the only thing she knows how to do.

She's trained, and skilled, and brave. None of it matters, or not enough to overcome his mission goals.

He takes the blow to his middle with barely a breath, countering with a shift of his leg behind hers as he body-slams her off balance and follows her down with a shoulder strike to pin her flat to the floor.

She hits the floor hard and instantly attempts to tie him up with her legs, but all the tricks she knows for getting a larger, heavier opponent to shift his weight enough for her to gain the advantage don't seem to work with him.

But she tries, struggling even as he pins her down, her eyes flashing fury and defiance until she manages to slip a knee between her belly and his and pushes up hard and fast, her other leg coming up to wrap around his neck as soon as she has enough space to move.

Her intent is clear, but before she can choke him he slips the lock with his left arm and flips her to the side, then lands his full weight on her to pin her for the seconds he needs.

The blow has to be carefully calculated to avoid breaking her neck or smashing her skull. He aims it with precision and smashes the heel of his right hand into her temple.

He slips her holds and smashes her back to the floor – damn – and she bares her teeth at him like a cat –

– and then his hand comes down, and everything flashes white, then fades into a sudden blackness as Sharon slumps, unconscious on the floor of her own apartment.

She goes limp under him, but he waits for a full minute before moving, paying attention to her breathing and any tension in her posture to make sure she's not pretending.

Once he's certain that she's not, he goes back to the bedroom window and retrieves the small package he'd left there. The Winter Soldier carries it back into the living room and goes to work.

He searches her impersonally but thoroughly, relieving her of any and all weapons and her phone, which he sets aside for later. Once he's certain she's not carrying anything she could use to escape, he sets about securing her with rope and tape - tying her at her ankles and knees, then her wrists behind her and her elbows as well, and finally fastening a strip of duct tape over her mouth.

The Winter Soldier leaves her lying on the floor for now and examines her phone. He uses it to take a picture of her, one that clearly shows her face, then studies the call history. Some of the numbers are labeled; at least one isn't, with its most recent inbound call earlier in the afternoon. He sends a single text.

call me, urgent

She wakes up to a throbbing ache in her temple and to the realization that she can't move. Or speak.

But she's alive, and that means something.

Sharon carefully tests her bonds, unwilling to start sunfishing and give him a reason to knock her out again, but he's wrapped her up tight, the man now standing in her apartment, his metal arm gleaming.

They call him the Winter Soldier. An assassin who's killed dozens of people over the last five decades. But he hasn't killed her, or even hurt her all that much. Everything he did, he did to subdue. She might have a minor concussion, and she's sore and bruised, but if she could get up right now she'd able to fight, to run.

But she can't, so she watches him, instead. He wears a mask over the lower half of his face and his long hair covers his eyes. He moves like a panther, like a wolf: an apex predator, here in her apartment.

And he has her phone.

He studies the phone, wondering if it's the right number, and if it is, whether the targets will take the bait. If it's not, or if they don't, he has fallback options, but things will get messy quickly and time is of the essence. Not only because of the deadline Command gave him, but because of the timing of the launch.

He glances over to check his prisoner's status and realizes she's awake and watching him. Phone in hand, the Winter Soldier goes down on one knee in front of her, examining her carefully to make sure she's secure before he meets her furious gaze.

He reaches out to touch the edge of the duct tape over her mouth, his metal fingers cold against her face. "Scream and die," he warns, harsh and flat. "понимаете?"

Edited 2023-05-08 12:48 (UTC)

She glares at him, meeting his flat stare with her own murderous one. This close, with the lights of her living room still on, she can see him more clearly, and she notes without realizing it that his eyes are a particular shade of slate blue.

His voice is low and devoid of emotion. Something twinges in her mind, hearing it, like a word on the tip of her tongue, but she's never seen him before, never heard him before. If he sounds like someone she's spoken to once, it doesn't mean anything here.

Tightly, she nods. No screaming.

He nods back, grasps the corner of the tape, and rips it free. The Winter Soldier drops it to the floor beside her and studies the phone again. No new messages, not yet.

She doesn't strictly need to be able to speak to accomplish his goal, but it's a simpler option with less evidence that could be used to mount a response if he's wrong about the number.

She winces as he rips the tape off her mouth, but doesn't scream. Instead, she focuses on him as she carefully, slowly, works her wrists, trying to loosen the ties around them.

He must know she's in touch with Steve. It's the only reason she can think of that she's still alive. "He'll see through you," she bluffs, watching as he studies her phone. "It won't work."

He doesn't bother responding to her bluster. It doesn't matter; if it doesn't work, he'll approach a different way. But she has confirmed the contact, which is useful in its own right.

The phone shivers in his hand, the number he'd texted calling her back, and he turns it so she can see the display. The Winter Soldier presses the button for speaker so she can see it and listens in silence as a man on the other end speaks.

"Sharon? What's going on? Are you all right?"

She stares daggers at the Winter Soldier, but injects warmth into her voice. "I'm okay."

If he thinks she'll act the damsel in distress and draw Steve back here to save her, he's dead wrong. "I just needed to tell you the search is ramping up. Whatever you do, stay out of the city."

Edited 2023-05-08 13:27 (UTC)

"That probably means they know we dodged the missile," a different voice says. She sounds wry. "Don't worry, we're fine, that shield's great protection."

The Winter Soldier makes note that the shield in question's stronger than he'd realized as the male target speaks again. "Listen, I think I've got a place for us to hole up. I'll text you the address; we can meet there, plan our next steps."

Satisfaction uncoils deep within him. That'll make everything very simple indeed.

"No," she says, hauling ruthlessly back on her voice to keep from leaping on the idea and tearing it to shreds.

Missile. She can't think about it yet. "I don't know how secure this number still is. And if I'm compromised, I don't want to be able to tell anyone where you are."

The Winter Soldier gives her a flat look and turns the phone to examine the controls as the female target says, "She's got a point. Sharon, do you have a burner?"

He presses the icon for a video call. The camera shows a flash of his own masked face, his empty gaze, before he holds it up and turns it to show the prisoner instead.

A harsh gasp echoes across the air. "Sharon!"

In this moment, the thing that floods through her isn't fear; it's exasperation. "Crap."

She glares over the phone at the Soldier, then focuses on the camera and puts as much reassurance into her voice as possible. "Do not come for me," she orders. "Stay away, Steve, I mean it. No matter what happens."

"You know I can't do that. And so does he." The target's voice is steady; admirable, the Winter Soldier thinks. He's weighed up the implications and chosen to face them.

In the background, the other target bursts into a flurry of Russian, telling him that Sharon's not his target, there's no reason to hurt her any more than he already has, that they can come to some arrangement. He ignores it.

He holds the phone steady so the target can see her, moving around a little so that the extent of her bindings is clear before he speaks. "I'll text a location. If you want her to live, come there."

He'll come, of course he'll come, because he's Steve and because he's her friend and because all those months ago he'd said you watch my back and I'll watch yours, how's that? and he'd meant it. "Rome," she says, desperation slipping into her voice.

Natasha is her good friend and Natasha is her colleague and Natasha knows that sometimes, there isn't a happy ending. She knows that sometimes, you have to make sacrifices. "Natasha, keep him away. Keep him away. Don't come. Do anything you have to do, but keep him away."

"If you want her to live," he says again. "Comply."

He disconnects the call without waiting for an answer and sticks her phone in his pants pocket, then considers her.

There's that niggling feeling again at the back of her head as he speaks, but her anger and frustration are overwhelming any attempt at remembering.

"If he comes, he's going to take you apart," she says, coldly. "Either way, you're going to lose."

"He'll come." His voice is level and empty of anything except deep and abiding certainty. He picks up the duct tape and tears off a new strip, then approaches her.

It's driving her crazy. "Your voice," she says, watching him without fear, even as she tries to pull away from the tape. "Why do I know your voice?"

That surprises him, enough for it to show in his glance. He pauses for an instant, studying her.

"I don't know." She can't have been a former target, or she wouldn't be here now.

There's a flicker of surprise in his eyes, the first proof of human emotion she's seen, and something, something about that expression, the color of his eyes and the line of his brows, the sound of his voice, all of it is pulling at her in ways she doesn't understand and can't pinpoint.

"Are you SHIELD?"

His expression flattens and goes empty. She is stalling, he realizes, that's all. Trying to gather intel, even while she's trussed up as she is. Brave of her, and dedicated, he can give her that much.

He ignores her question and stretches the tape between his hands, reaching to apply it to her mouth once more.

Not SHIELD. She can't think of anyone she knows with hair like that, with eyes like that.

But she knows him. She knows his voice. If she could get him to say something else, to say something familiar...

Or if she could get the damn mask off –

Sharon jerks her head away from him, trying to get him to lean forward and a little off-balance, then bends her name and rolls her hips up, aiming for his jaw, trying to knock the mask loose.

Impatience flares in his glance as he jerks back from her attempted blow. The Winter Soldier adds stubborn to his mental list of descriptives for her, and moves with sudden stunning speed.

He drops the strip of tape across her throat in order to pin her flat to the ground by the shoulder with his left hand, then swings a leg over and settles his full weight over her hips, his ankles hooked behind him over her thighs to keep her from being able to push up. The Winter Soldier reaches behind her head and runs his right hand into her hair, tangling his fingers in it and gripping hard, forcing her to tilt her head back so she can't twist away as he picks the strip of tape back up once more in metal fingers.

He's over her and on top of her in the next second, his weight bearing her down and his hand is gripping her hair, tugging her head back –

His hand. Fingers slipping through the strands of her hair, a horrible nightmare of intimacy as he leans down, his eyes boring into hers and she breathes and can smell his scent, and then it washes over her, horrible certainty.

His voice. His eyes. The fingers in her hair, that touch her with ruthless efficiency and violence. His weight settled over her, as familiar as her own.

Her eyes widen, horror stabbing through her as realization hits. "No..."

It's not possible. It can't be. Is she dreaming? Is this some new, terrible nightmare?

But she knows his voice. " – Bucky?"

Again, she has surprised him. He pulls his left hand back for a second and stares at her with total incomprehension.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

"Take off your mask," she demands, desperate. "Take it off, let me see your face."

It can't be. He's gone. He's been gone for decades. She's lost her mind.

But she'd know him anywhere. "Goddammit, take off your mask!"

Her demand makes even less sense than anything else she's said or done up to now. He stares at her in silence, his mind racing. What is she thinking? He's never seen her in BaseOps, or any facility or outpost, not that he remembers anyway. Why would his appearance matter?

He doesn't know. It shouldn't matter, but if there's a way this development could affect the mission somehow, then he should find out.

He discards the tape to the side and raises his left hand to his face. He removes the mask and sets it aside on the floor, then meets her eyes and waits for her reaction.

Edited 2023-05-08 18:54 (UTC)

Her breath shudders to a halt in her throat, her chest, and she idly wonders if she might pass out. She's not the type to faint, but there's only so much a woman can take, and the assassin who'd broken into her apartment and tied her up revealing himself to be her long-dead lover, who doesn't seem to know her, is about as far as any person can go.

"Bucky," she whispers. It is him, although she has no idea how. How he's here, how he looks like he's hardly aged, how he has a metal arm, how he's become a Russian assassin. She can't stop herself; it jerks out of her, two years of agony and longing and all the shock she's feeling behind the word. "Baby."

Not helpful, Carter. It's clear he doesn't remember her, or even himself. "You are James Buchanan Barnes," she tells him, and can't help the desperation in her voice. "Don't you remember me? Don't you remember Steve?"

She's striving to convince him, calling him by an affectionate name, asking him to remember her, to remember others, and he can't make sense of any of it.

"I am the Ziminy Soldat," he tells her, the one thing he is sure of in this moment, and reaches for the tape again.

"You're Sergeant Barnes," she tells him, sharp. "Snap out of it, Bucky!"

The lamp he'd given her is the bedroom, the hairclips on the bureau. He isn't everywhere in this apartment, but there are small things, things she can explain away if she needs to, like the photos on her phone –

Her phone. If he opens the photos, he could see the one she'd taken of them on that hillside so long ago. "Just listen to me – "

The tape has twisted with all this stopping and starting. He drops it and lets go of her hair to lean over and retrieve the roll, methodically tearing a fresh piece.

"I understand." Her bravery deserves acknowledgement, he decides. "You are trying to save him. Them. It won't work. Take comfort that you did everything you could."

"I'm trying to save you all."

Steve. Steve. This will break his heart, just like it's breaking hers. "Bucky, please."

"Soldat," he reminds her, even as her heartrending plea twists something deep inside him for reasons he can't explain. This conversation needs to end. He can't afford to be distracted any longer. "Hush now."

With that, he leans forward, using his forearms to frame her face in a vise so she can't turn away again, and pastes the tape over her mouth.

He leans down, bracketing her head with his arms, close enough to kiss. But it's duct tape that presses against her lips, even as she takes a shuddering breath.

He's alive. Somehow, some impossible way, he's alive. Grief and loss and pain and longing and horror all mix in her eyes as she watches him, before they gloss over with a skim of tears. She blinks hard to clear her vision, a single drop leaking out of the corner of her eye, tracking over her temple.

There's no fear in her gaze, but he can't fathom everything else that he sees there. The Winter Soldier gets to his feet in a single lithe motion and stares down at her for several long seconds before he steps away and withdraws his phone from his pocket. Even while he places the call, he's careful to keep her in view.

"Она у меня. Очистите подход," he says, when the contact answers.

"Copy. Do you want us to notify STRIKE?" The Winter Soldier considers. "Я разберусь с этим."

There's not much she can do aside from roll around on the floor, and she has to be careful not to hurt herself, not to tire herself out. Methodically, she starts working at her wrist ties once more, doing her best to ignore the way her mind is racing.

If she lets herself think about it, she'll break. And she can't afford to break. Not yet.

He places the next call to the STRIKE team leader, switching languages as the other man doesn't speak more than fundamental Russian. It doesn't matter that he's being overheard; she won't be telling anyone about any of this.

"Targets contacted and acquired," he says, when Rumlow answers. "The operation is go. Maintain the perimeter."

"You sure you don't want us in there with you?" The Winter Soldier represses a sigh. The man's dislike of the target, his need to cause him harm and his enjoyment of pain, all of these are weaknesses that could risk the mission.

"Maintain the perimeter," he repeats. "Allow them to pass in, then secure it."

Rumlow. That goddamn traitor. She'd known there was something off about him, and the Steve had said SHIELD had sent STRIKE after him.

Grief gives way to hot rage as she listens, her temper simmering behind the tape that's keeping her silent.

"Your call," Rumlow assures him. He can hear the smirk in the man's voice, and ignores it. "Just, you don't know Cap like I do, is all. He's a hell of a fighter. Might even be a match for you. You might want the backup."

He makes himself consider the idea from all angles, and makes his decision. "Hold the perimeter as instructed. Prevent the targets' escaping - a third time," he says, pointedly. "Maintain plausible deniability."

"Fine, fine," Rumlow sighs. "Have it your way."

The Winter Soldier disconnects the call and stashes his phone before he crouches down beside Sharon. He picks up his mask and dons it, then lifts her into his arms and stands, starting toward her bedroom.

He slips his arms beneath her and picks her up and all she can think of is him laughing up at her, down at her, picking her up like she weighs nothing at all, kissing her down into the bed.

She won't. Refuses to let it hit. Not yet, not now.

But she can't help her glance as it goes to the little pottery lamp he'd given her so long ago, sitting there on her bedside table.

She looks over at something and his glance flicks to follow, but he doesn't see anything of interest. No weapons, no other phone to try to call for help, only a small ceramic piece of some kind. Maybe she was evaluating her odds of breaking it and using it as a makeshift knife to saw at her bindings.

She won't have the opportunity. He sets her down in the middle of the bed, then pulls at her ankles until she's laid out in a straight line, after which he flips the comforter up over her feet. He doesn't do the same for the edge that would cover her head; she'll need the airflow. Instead, he moves to the side so that he can do the same from there and roll her up in middle of the doubled blanket.

He sets her down without any care other than to not drop her bodily on the bed and begins wrapping her up in her comforter, which at least allows her to work more busily at her bindings without fear of him seeing the minute shifts of her shoulders and hips.

She watches him as he moves around her, her gaze ruthlessly locked on him, looking for any sign, any hint, that the man she knew still lives inside that body.

She watches him intently, at least until he finishes rolling her over and over in the comforter, wrapping her securely. Once he's done so, he pulls the outer edge hard, until it covers her face and head, then swings her up and drapes her over his right shoulder.

Once she's stable, he brings her to the window and shoves it fully open. He scans their surroundings, then unsnaps a grappling hook from behind his belt and attaches it to the windowsill. He grasps the cable in his left hand and steps out into space in a descent that's rapid enough to be nothing more than a controlled fall to the street below, carrying her with him.

The shock of the fall sends her heart slamming into her ribs, but she can't make any sounds louder than a few muffled moans. She wishes, fervently, that she'd asked for an apartment a little closer to the ground floor.

But he doesn't drop her, thankfully, and at least the blanket is loose enough over her face that she can breathe, albeit only through her nose. Where he's taking her, she has no idea: she can't see and has no sense of direction. She might as well be blind.

Moving quickly, he carries her across the street and down half a block to the vehicle. The Winter Soldier deposits her in the trunk and makes sure she has airflow before he slams it shut and gets into the front.

The engine roars, and he pulls out at a discreet pace. It's only a couple of miles from here to the ambush site.

Darkness falls, and she only has to listen for a moment before she hears the engine start up and feels the car begin to move.

How much time she has, she doesn't know, but there's none to waste. In wrapping her up with the comforter, he'd made it far more difficult to maneuver herself, but a few moments of flopping like a fish on dry land loosens the comforter enough that she can move, a little.

She bends her knees and pushes her shoulders back as far as she can – Christ, she really should have been doing more yoga – trying to access the ties at her ankles with fingers that are swiftly going numb.

The team's cleared the approach effectively, as ordered, although he makes note of the STRIKE tactical vehicle parked on the grass under a tree near the river as he passes it. Rumlow's definition of 'perimeter' could use some work, apparently.

He pulls up behind the edge of the World War II memorial and opens the trunk. The Winter Soldier considers the bundle of comforter, then lifts it over his left shoulder and grabs a duffel bag in his right hand before starting toward the nearby bell tower.

By the time the car has stopped, she's managed to loosen, though not undo, the ties around her ankles. She feels likes she's dislocated both her shoulders in the process, but it's something.

When he opens the trunk and takes her out, she goes limp, making it as difficult for him to carry as possible – not that he seems to have any trouble with it.

Not that he ever did.

Carefully, she tests the ties at her ankles. With a sharp enough motion, she might be able to snap them and make a run for it.

He sets her on the ground in the middle of the tower, under the bell, and pulls a knife. Deftly, he slits the comforter in two down the center of mass from the top of her head to her hips, leaving her lower body wrapped for now, and reaches for the duffel.

The parachute harness he withdraws is strong black nylon and black matte steel buckles. He starts fastening it around her with brusque efficiency.

Well, fuck.

She doesn't have much choice; she has to work with what she's got, and what she's got are slightly loosened ankles. Rocking back, she lifts her legs and kicks, hard, trying to snap the ties and get a foot into his gut.

He shifts to the side with lithe speed and brings his hand down on her stomach hard enough to drive the air from her, then gives her a flat stare. "Would you rather be unconscious?"

Something flickers in his glance, just for an instant; something almost like realization. "You can, if you prefer not to see it happen."

Edited 2023-05-08 23:03 (UTC)

She doubles over, desperate for breath, the tape fluttering over her mouth as she tries instinctively to gulp air. By the time she's forced herself to breathe deeply through her nose, she's so light-headed that it wouldn't be hard at all for her to simply slip into unconsciousness.

The way he says it, it's almost like he's offering mercy. She glares, fury and desperation mixed with the shock and confusion that hasn't gone anywhere, and meets his glance steadily, refusing to give in.

Edited 2023-05-09 00:53 (UTC)

He nods, reading her denial of that option in her eyes. "Then stop fighting me," he warns, and reaches to continue doing up the harness.

He trusses her up in the harness as she watches his every move, searching for any hint that Bucky Barnes is alive inside his own mind, his own body. What did they do to him? What happened?

He checks every buckle, every strap, then stands in a single swift movement. He retrieves two nylon climbing ropes from the bag and throws one end of each over the rafter that holds the bell, one on each side. He brings the loop ends back to her and uses two D-rings to clip the ropes to the harness at her shoulders.

With ruthless efficiency, he cuts the rest of the comforter away and checks her ties. Her ankles are loose, he finds, and tightens them again before he hauls her to her feet.

"Stand still," he orders, and pulls out her phone, aiming the camera at her.

She stares at him as he aims her phone camera at her.

("Smile."

"Will you look at that?"

"Like magic, isn't it?")

With her hands tied and her mouth covered, she can't offer any kind of warning to Steve, any kind of preparation. All she can do is watch the Winter Soldier and hope that there's some way, somehow, of bringing him back to himself.

He adds location data to the image, watching as it generates a small map image with a pin in it, and texts both to the targets' number with a succinct message.

proof of life. if you want her to stay that way, hurry.

That done, he grabs the ropes and hauls her upward. Once she's hanging midair below the tower bell, ten feet above ground, he ties them off and returns the bag and scraps of comforter to the trunk and slams it shut.

It's far from comfortable, hanging here like this. At least she isn't so high that the fall will severely injure her... probably. Not unless she lands wrong.

Not that she has much of a choice in how she lands, all tied up like she is.

The only thing to do now is to wait, and to hope Nat had managed to keep Steve away like she asked.

There's no way for the target to approach the tower unseen. All the trees are set back far enough that they can't use them for cover beyond a point or to drop down. The marble columns of the tower itself will prevent the man from using that shield of his to slice the ropes from a distance; the only way to free her is to get inside, and once they do, the team will surround them and open fire from the compass points, covering all angles.

The Winter Soldier circles behind her so that she can't watch him leave, then moves around the memorial and takes up position on top of the opposite bell tower in the shadows, and waits.

She doesn't know how long she hangs there, watching the shadows lengthen and shift around the memorial, but it's long enough that her arms have gone completely to sleep and a dull ache has spread from the temple he'd hit and turned into a raging headache.

The memorial is silent. There's no sign of the Winter Soldier, STRIKE, or Steve and Nat. The only movement she sees is the shadow of some large bird – an eagle, maybe – as it circles high above.

She blinks her bleary eyes. Is that shadow getting bigger? And that sound –

A rush of air is the only warning she has before a winged man barrel rolls into the bell tower. There's a flash of metal and then she's weightless for a second before he catches her and swoops down out of the tower, then climbs toward the sky. "Hey," he greets her, grinning. "We haven't met yet. I'm Sam."

This hadn't been in the file. He hadn't planned for the targets to have an ally with wings.

The Winter Soldier flings a grenade into the air above the hostile to drive them lower, follows it with a burst of gunfire, then leaps as high and far as he can, clamping onto the man's calf with his left hand.

There's a violent lurch, and Sam yelps. "What the hell, man?"

He looks down and kicks at the man's hand as the extra weight strains his wings. In his arms, Sharon does her best to yell behind the tape, desperate to get it off her mouth, but Sam's arms are full. He twists in the air, trying to shake the man – and then a red, white, and blue streak sizzles through the air, and Steve's shield strikes the Winter Soldier's metal wrist, full force.

He twists in midair as the blow knocks his grip loose, grabbing the leather straps on the back of the shield in order to bring it down with him as he lands on solid earth once more.

The redheaded woman has engaged the team from cover, he sees, while the blond man is running toward him at superhuman speed. The Winter Soldier flings the shield at him as he'd done before, and this time follows it up with a rush of his own, slamming his left fist down to shatter the man's skull.

Steve catches the shield and just barely gets it up in time to block the punch, which hits hard enough that only the vibranium of the shield manages to stop it. Even so, Steve's pushed back several feet before he can leap back to the attack. "Sam!" he yells, his focus on the Winter Soldier. "Get her out of here!"

There's a flurry up in the sky, and then he hears Sharon's voice, desperate and strained. "Steve! It's – "

A burst of gunfire sends Sam wheeling through the sky to avoid the rain of bullets. Steve has just enough time to see that a cluster of STRIKE operatives have come around to engage Sam, but there's nothing he can do about it right now, not with the Winter Soldier bearing down on him.

Edited 2023-05-09 02:35 (UTC)

He draws the pistol at his hip and fires several staccato bursts, all of which ping from the shield with no effect. He discards it in favor of the Skorpion automatic which he draws from behind his back, only to find it has no better effect.

He has to clear the shield from his target to remove his protection. The Winter Soldier closes with him, grabbing for the metal edge with his left hand, and wrenches it around in a spinning twist.

He flips with the momentum of the twist and lets go of the shield, then presses his own attack, throwing hard punches at the Winter Soldier and dodging the metal fist and the edge of his own shield.

The long-ago boxing lessons with Bucky had started his training, but he's worked hard since then, and he's picked up a few tricks of his own, most of which take advantage of his sheer size, speed, and strength. He goes for the body, fists thudding against body armor, and can hardly believe how fast the other man is.

He drops a knife into his right hand and slices across the target's center mass, only for a blow to his arm to knock the blade free and send it clattering away. He flings the shield again, hard, and the man ducks beneath the metal disc, which embeds itself deep in the side of one of the marble colums.

The fight, deadly as it is, begins to take on a strange resonance as they struggle. Block after block, stab and punch and slash and twist away and in again -- there's something about it, something --

( -- like training, or being back in the ring with -- )

-- almost, almost familiar.

The blond man grabs his forearm, and the Winter Soldier's arm flexes and metal plates ripple violently as he tries to rip it away again. He goes tumbling as he rips himself free, then kicks the target in the gut as the man charges him and sends him flying, slamming back into the side of a stone wall. He follows with a rush that brings them both up against the wall and locks his left hand around the target's throat, but somehow, impossibly, the man manages to tear free. Another flurry of blows, another desperate wrestling struggle, and this time it's the Winter Soldier who goes flying, his mask ripped from him as he goes rolling across the ground toward the fountain and back onto his feet.

He turns to face the other man once more, ready for the next assault.

Steve stands, slow, his gaze caught and disbelieving. He can't feel the breath as his chest rises and falls, rapid and shallow.

It's impossible. It's –

"Bucky?"

That name again. He stares at the other man in frustrated disbelief, and repeats the question he'd asked before.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

But the answer doesn't matter; the blond man's shock, whatever the reason, gives him an opportunity. In a heartbeat, the Winter Soldier levels his pistol at his target.

Steve can't move. He's frozen to the ground, his shield loose at his side.

Bucky. It's Bucky. But – how? Why? He'd seen his best friend fall, had heard his screams echoing off the mountainside. He and Sharon had held each other as they cried.

The Soldier – Bucky, Bucky – levels a pistol at his face, but before he can pull the trigger, Sam swoops down, hitting Bucky in the back with both feet at top speed and sending him sprawling.

He rolls with the impact, over and over across the concrete, and finally ends up back on his feet beside another marble column. Voices begin to scream inside his head as he stares at his opponent. His target. His mission.

(confirmed death in ten hours)

Something wrenches sickly within him, and sudden desperation twists his features. He raises his gun again, only to duck as the red-haired woman launches a grenade at him from the other side of the fountain. It hits the tower, exploding it in smoke and fire and marble shrapnel.

He can hear distant sirens approaching, hear STRIKE yelling as Rumlow brings the perimeter in, and realizes the window of opportunity is closing. He'll pay for this failure, he knows it, but it would be worse to be taken alive by the enemy. He knows that too, as deeply as though it's engraved on his bones.

He has to run.

Steve ducks as Nat fires a grenade and destroys the tower Sharon had been in earlier. When he straightens again, Bucky's gone.

Maybe he was never there. Maybe he's seeing things.

Sam comes jogging over, and Steve turns to him, his glance searching around the memorial. "Where's Sharon?"

"She's fine, I dropped her over by the monument out of range of this mess," Sam assures him. "You okay?"

"Never mind that, we've got to go, now!" Natasha snaps, sharp, as she runs over to join them. "Come on!"

He can't even begin to answer Sam's question. He gives Nat a quick onceover and notes that she looks bruised but fine, and takes refuge in what needs to be done. "Sam, get her out of here," he orders, and takes off at top speed for the Washington Monument, fueling every step with the adrenaline that hasn't stopped pumping through his body.

Was that really Bucky? Bucky's alive?

She clutches the grenade launcher as Sam wraps his arms around her and heads for the sky, tracking the activity below. Nat takes one last shot, this time hitting STRIKE’s tactical vehicle as it starts to pull out. It goes up in a burst of flame, blown over on its side and skidding.

It’ll buy them the time they need to get clear, she hopes. She drops the gun - ammo exhausted, it’s useless now - and holds on to Sam as he arrows off in a dizzying, swooping flight to throw off pursuit.

She couldn’t see what happened to James. He had just disappeared.

Again.

Sam had deposited her quickly but gently by the Washington Monument and told her to stay put as he cut her ties. She obeys, but not because he told her to. She's unarmed, in shock, and injured, and she'd be a liability in the fight, right now.

She bites off a yell as blood rushes painfully back into her arms and feet, while Sam swoops back up into the sky, and staggers upright, one hand on the gritty stone of the monument. Steve. Steve has no idea. She has to tell him, she has to –

What? What can she even do? Bucky's alive, but he isn't himself. She thinks of the way he'd watched her, cool and blank, how every touch had been to injure or confine or stifle. Her eyes squeeze shut as her fingers press into an impotent fist. He'd hurt her. He'd abducted her. He's trying to kill Steve.

The thoughts open up before her in a yawning pit. If she tumbles into it, she doesn't know how she'll get out again.

He spots her right where Sam had said she’d be and veers in her direction. Relief grips him, followed by a sickening clench in his gut at what this news will do to her.

Nothing around him seems real. Everything yaws crazily, like the whole world’s a funhouse mirror. He makes himself focus past it on the immediate issue. “Sharon?” Steve comes to her side and puts an arm around her.

“Can you walk? We’ve got to get out of sight, to the rendezvous point—-“

"I can walk."

She'd better. They need to get out of here, and she's not sure she could stomach being carried, even by Steve. He puts his arm around her, and she turns in to him, clutching at his shirt, her face pale aside from the red rectangle around her mouth. Blood wells from a few spots where the fragile skin had ripped off along with the tape.

They have to go. She has to tell him. "Steve – Steve, I saw his face."

They have to move, but he can’t. He can’t. Steve stares at her. She saw him too.

“I wasn’t dreaming.” Bucky. Bucky with a metal arm, Bucky trying to kill him, Bucky—-

“It was him.”

Steve saw him. Steve knows. Steve – Steve. What will this do to Steve? She nods, desperate. "It's him."

A siren wails, startling her out of her fugue, and she looks up at Steve, forcing her voice to stay calm. "Where do we go?"

"This way." He keeps his arm around her as he leads her off to the side where they'd stashed the bike. She looks like she needs the support, and he knows he does, too.

"I'll get us there. Just hold on to me."

Steve half-coaxes, half-carries her to a bike he'd hidden a little ways away, and once they're both on, she wraps her arms around his middle and clings to him, more grateful than she can say for his steady gravity. She leans her unbruised cheek against him and hangs on, as memories flood unbidden through her mind.

(if that doesn't work and it's possible for a ghost to keep fighting, I'll do that too)

The sirens fade away behind them, eventually, as Steve navigates them through the city, towards a quiet, residential block. She has no idea if it'll be far enough. Is anyplace in the city safe, anymore?

They'd decided not to go straight back to Sam's house, just in case he was identified, and instead selected an apartment building in the neighborhood not too far away. Steve guides the bike into a spot on the street and leads her through a back alley and down through a basement window, then to the service elevator that leads to the roof.

Sam's pacing back and forth outside a greenhouse there, while Natasha leans against the glass wall, arms crossed. Although she looks outwardly relaxed, Steve sees how she's watching everything possible.

Relief passes over Nat's features as she sees them, followed by dismay as she takes in Sharon's state. She crosses to them and puts a gentle hand on Sharon's shoulder. "Hey, you."

"Nat."

She finds a small smile for her friend, then leans in to hug her. "You just couldn't listen, could you?"

"When have I ever?" She hugs her back, keeping her embrace gentle. "How badly are you hurt?"

"He didn't break anything." And he'd kept the body blows just shy of hard enough to really damage her, internally. At least he didn't hit her with the metal arm, thank God. "I'm okay, Rome."

Physically, anyway. But the truth is, she's never been so injured in her life. She can barely probe at the edges of the confused agony that's ripping out her insides. "Lucky for me, he wanted bait."

"I know you probably don't feel that lucky, but you really are," Nat assures her. James could have killed her without blinking, and would have if she'd been designated a target or if he hadn't had a reason to keep her alive.

"He's ruthless." At their side, Steve makes a harsh, broken sort of sound, enough of one to draw Sam to his side with quick steps. "Hey, man, are you hurt?"

That sounds feels like it could have been ripped from her own chest. "Steve," she says, helplessly.

What can she say? What can anyone?

She lets go of Nat to put a hand on Steve's back, then looks back at Sam and her friend. "I saw his face," she tells them, ruthlessly pressing down on her own feelings. "The Winter Soldier is Bucky. Bucky Barnes. Steve's best friend. We – everyone thought – "

She struggles with the words, then swallows and continues, so Steve won't have to. "He was lost, back in World War II. Presumed dead."

He slips his arm around her and holds on, trying to give her the support he knows she needs right now, grateful beyond words that however this has come to pass, he's not facing it alone.

Nat's gone pale for some reason, he notes. Sam's frowning at them. "How is that even possible? It was like seventy years ago."

"Zola." God, he wishes he could get his hands on the man, the computer bank, whatever, but that's no longer an option. "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him."

Her fingers clench into Steve's shirt at his back, where Nat and Sam can't see. "Whatever Zola did to him must have allowed him to survive the fall," she says, through numb lips. "I don't know how Bucky Barnes could be the Winter Soldier, but – we can't leave him like this."

Despite her best efforts, her words are tinged raw with desperation. "We have to get him out."

"Listen." Sam's voice is kind, his tone gentle. "Whoever he used to be... the guy just tried to kill you. Now I'm sorry, I am, but I don't think there's anything left of your friend. The man he is now - that's someone who needs to be stopped."

Steve feels like he's going to be sick. "I can't do that. Not to him."

Edited 2023-05-09 15:30 (UTC)

She lets go of Steve's shirt and wraps her arm around his back the way he has his around hers, trying to support him, trying to let him know she's here, right here, and that she has his back. No matter what. "That isn't an option," she tells Sam, pale but determined.

Nat, she notes, looks vaguely ill. Sharon reaches out a hand to her, too. "Nat... trust me. Please."

"His name really is James?" She's white to the lips, she's sure, and there's nothing to do about it. Nat looks back and forth between Steve and Sharon, who are clinging to each other like there's no other support in the whole world.

She knows the feeling. "That was - that's your friend's name, right? James Buchanan Barnes?"

"Yes."

Sharon frowns at her, concerned and confused. "Nat, how did you know his name is James?"

Edited 2023-05-09 16:12 (UTC)

"Because he chose it. For a cover," Nat says, and Steve staggers as he feels the ground shift beneath his feet.

He'd just confided in her earlier that he trusts her now, but-- "You knew?"

Nat takes Sharon's outstretched hand and gives him a pleading look. "I didn't. Not this. Your friend's name is in your file, but there weren't any pictures. I didn't know, Steve, I swear it."

The bombshells just keep falling, cracking the air around her ears and making the world skew crazily from side to side. She grips Nat's hand and holds on, unable to parse any of this.

Nat knows him. Knew him. Knows him. Bucky, her Bucky, Steve's Bucky. James. Who shot her in Odessa, who kidnapped Sharon from her apartment. Steve looks shocked to the core, but Sharon takes a look at Nat, then turns to him. "She's telling the truth," she says, staunchly defending her friend. "She wouldn't lie to you about this, Steve."

She's glad of Sharon's support, but she wouldn't blame Steve for not believing her, and starts trying to think what she'll do if he doesn't, how to adapt so they can all survive.

But he stares at her, then at Sharon, then visibly shakes himself and blows out a breath. "Okay," Steve says. "Okay. I believe you. But how-- what cover?"

"It was years ago," she says, feeling the ache as though it was just yesterday. "Before I got out. He... he helped train me. We worked together for a while."

Surely that's enough. Surely she doesn't have to tear herself wide open right here in front of them all. It has to be enough. Doesn't it?

Edited 2023-05-09 17:11 (UTC)

Sharon squeezes her hand. "Okay," she murmurs. "Okay."

She looks over at Sam, at Steve. "If he picked the name 'James,' maybe he does remember something," she says, knowing she's grasping at straws. "Subconsciously, anyway."

The hope that flashes through him at that thought nearly brings him to his knees. He can't speak.

"Okay," Sam puts in, looking back and forth between them all. "Say he does remember something, deep down somewhere. How're we gonna ask him about it? Because he's still trying to kill y'all."

"He still has my phone," Sharon tells them.

She pushes away thoughts of Bucky marveling at her 'magic camera' and sets her shoulders. "We can contact him that way."

"Call him," Steve demands, turning to Nat, and Sam holds up both hands to try to slow them down. "Whoa, whoa, hold on a second."

Before any of them can turn on him, he continues, "Look, I'm not saying don't do it. But I am saying we need to think this through first. Plan it out." He's pretty sure he's the only one of the three who isn't emotionally compromised in some way, which means he has to be the voice of reason, no matter how much he sympathizes with them all.

What would he do, if he were able to get Riley back? He puts that into his face, his voice, and meets Steve's eyes. "You're likely only gonna get one chance at this, man. We need to make it a good one."

"He'll try to complete his mission," Nat murmurs, and Sharon takes a deep breath.

"Then we'll need to safeguard against that," she says. "But even if he weren't already strong and fast enough to be hard to tackle, that arm is a problem."

"My Widow Bites should be able to short it out. At least for a moment or two," Nat offers. "But it wouldn't be for long."

He hates this, hates thinking of Bucky like an enemy that they have to bring down, but if it means he can save his best friend he'll do it in a heartbeat. "I can match him for strength," he says, low but clear. "If we could just get him restrained somewhere long enough to talk. There has to be a way to get through to him."

"If you can short out the arm," Sharon tells Nat, "that might give us the time we need to immobilize it. But how?"

"A vise?" Sam wonders, out loud. "Put something real heavy on his hand?"

"As long as we don't hurt him." His voice shakes a little; he can't help it.

Sam looks doubtful and Nat looks grim; Sharon spreads her hand over Steve's back and looks at the others. "Can you guys give us a minute?"

"Sure," Sam says, with an easy smile. He glances at Nat and tips his head toward the greenhouse. "Come on. We can go look at the flowers."

Nat trades a look with Sharon before following Sam across the roof. Steve has no idea what it means, but he's not sure it matters. He looks at Sharon. "You don't think I'm wrong, do you?"

"You know I don't." She comes around to stand in front of him, reaching for his hands as she looks up into his face. Even he, the supersoldier, shows the marks of a fight with the man now known as the Winter Soldier, and she knows that, like her, the worst injuries aren't even visible. "I don't want to hurt him. I don't even want to restrain him, even though he... "

She drifts off, then squeezes his hands to come back to herself. "If hurting him a little now means saving him in the long run, then we might have to make that choice. Even though it'll hurt us, too."

Even though. Steve can't help himself, and frees his hands so that he can pull her into a gentle hug, holding her close. How much must she be hurting right now, after what she's just been through at the hands of the man who loved her?

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry, Sharon."

Steve isn't wearing body armor, and Steve doesn't have a metal arm, and Steve touches her now with only the intent to soothe and comfort, but she still stiffens for a moment before she relaxes and puts her arms around him in return. She can't break, not yet, but for a moment she presses her face into his chest, allowing a few shaky breaths with which to steady herself.

"He tried to kill you," she whispers back. "He didn't recognize your name, or mine, or Nat's... he – "

Her throat locks up, and she swallows, hard. "Somehow, he's part of all this. He's their weapon."

She tenses, and he almost lets go, afraid he's hurt her somehow, but then her arms come around him and he just holds on instead.

"We'll get him back." He refuses to entertain any other option. "There has to be a way. He's still Bucky. He has to be in there somewhere."

The certainty in his voice is a balm to everywhere she feels sliced open, raw and bleeding.

Sharon looks up at him, longing and fear and careful wonder mixed across her face. For once, her expression is as cracked and clear as his own. "Steve," she says, soft. Beneath it all, the pain and worry and shock, wild hope is beginning to spark. "He's alive. Bucky's alive."

"All this time." He'd survived the fall. Sharon had even asked, once Tony'd raised the suspicion: could Steve himself have survived it?

He hadn't known. He'd been sure Bucky couldn't have. And he'd been wrong, so wrong, and hadn't even looked. Two years.

"We'll get him back," he says again. "Whatever it takes."

A shadow crosses his face, darkens his eyes, and she's pretty sure she knows what he's thinking. "Hey."

She reaches up to cradle his head in her hands, meeting his gaze with her own steady one. "We'll worry about the rest of it later. Right now, let's go get our boy back. Okay?"

"You bet we will." And he'll deal with his guilt then, and later, and probably for the rest of his life - but she's right.

"Come on." He turns to walk beside her, one arm still around her as he leads her toward the greenhouse. "Nat and I need to bring you up to speed, too. There's a lot that's happened."

He'd made his way through the various underground systems and tunnels beneath the city without difficulty. When he reaches the branch point, he hesitates, his thoughts a whirl of chaos. After a full five minutes of indecision, instead of taking the branch that leads to BaseOps, he takes the one that brings him back to the apartment building - hers and his, his prisoner and one of his targets, the place the Director had fled to. Maybe he'll find some answers there.

Bucky. The name means nothing to him. It isn't even Russian, is completely nonsensical in that language, so how could it be his? He's well aware that he doesn't remember things between assignments; something to do with the science that makes him what he is, an unavoidable side effect of the cryostasis perhaps. It's not like anyone's ever explained it to him; he's a weapon, he doesn't need to know. What matters is the mission. That's all.

So how could they know him? Both of them, the woman and the man; both calling him by the same name, both stunned by his face--

It doesn't make sense. He has to learn more. He has to find out what it means.

He makes his way into the basement of the building and up the stairs to the woman's apartment to begin his search.

In the end, they'd decided it would be best if Steve made the call and offered to meet, with Nat standing by to translate or cajole in Russian. Sharon stands nearby, her arms wrapped around herself, her face throbbing where the tape had ripped off her mouth.

Steve takes a deep breath, then looks to Nat and nods. She nods back, then lifts her phone and presses first the call button, then the speaker icon.

He studies the little ceramic in his cupped palm. It's a lamp, he thinks, if a tiny one. The small candle inside should send light through the shapes cut into it, painting a moon and stars on whatever's around it.

That's all it is, though, as far as he can tell. There's no hidden compartment, no data chip, no pressed-paper message. Nothing but pottery and wax.

The Winter Soldier turns it over again and again in his fingers, then shoves it absently in a pocket and forgets about it as his phone buzzes. But no - it's not his own contact device, he realizes; it's the woman's phone. Adrenaline surges, bringing everything to sharp focus as he pulls it out and looks at the screen. The number's very, very familiar.

He presses the speaker icon to accept the call, and waits in silence for someone to speak.

"Bucky," Steve says, and for a second it looks like just that word will break him. Nat glances warning at him, and he takes a shuddering breath. "Soldier. You know who this is?"

For a second he considers not answering, but if he does he might be able to gain more information. And it's not as though he's going to reveal anything that he shouldn't, or that the man doesn't already know.

"You're my mission."

Steve flinches. Sharon uncrosses her arms and puts a hand at his back.

"If I'm your mission, then you won't say no to another chance at getting me," he says. "I want to meet."

"Why?"

But the man's not wrong. Confirmed death in ten hours. Maybe he can still make Command's deadline after all.

"Does it matter?"

Steve glances at Nat, who nods. "I'll send a time and place. Away from civilians. If you want another shot, you can have one."

"No." It doesn't matter; what matters is the mission, and the best way to accomplish it. He hadn't seemed suicidal, but perhaps it's self-sacrifice. He might think that offering himself up will protect others, the blonde woman especially.

More likely it's a trap, but that doesn't matter either. He can still use it.

"Both, or just you?" If his target's going to be this foolish, he might as well see how much he can get out of it.

Edited 2023-05-09 22:19 (UTC)

"Both," Steve says, grim. Sharon's not sure if the Soldier means her or Nat as the other, but that doesn't really matter, either, does it?

His eyes narrow as he considers that.

"You should keep anyone else away." Low and even. "I won't guarantee their safety otherwise."

"You let me worry about safety," Steve tells him. "All I need is for you to come. Alone."

So it is a trap, and an obvious one. As good a fighter as the other man is, he may think he can defeat the Winter Soldier and end the threat.

He's wrong, of course.

It would be unwise of him to agree. He should call in STRIKE or another squad from the mercenary team for operational support. The problem, however, is that doing so has the chance of spooking the target.

"You've been warned," he says, making his decision. "Send me the coordinates."

This is killing Steve. She can see it in his face, but he tightens his jaw and nods. "Copy," he says. "Over and out."

He hangs up the call like he's afraid to let it go even a second longer, then sends the location and time before releasing a long, shaky breath.

The call disconnects, and an instant later the phone buzzes again with the details for the meet. He memorizes them and shoves the phone back in his pocket before starting for the door, his search forgotten.

There's not a lot of time, and he'll need every second to prepare.

Steve breathes for a moment, then looks over at Sam and Nat. "Ready?"

They both nod, before Sam takes Nat in his arms and takes to the sky once more, flying swiftly to the meeting place to prepare it before the Winter Soldier can arrive.

Sharon looks over at Steve, her own face pale but set. "It'll work," she murmurs. "It has to."

"It'll work," he agrees, trying to make it sound more certain than he feels. She's right, it has to. He won't be able to live with himself if it doesn't.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" He's pretty darn sure there's nothing in the world that'd stop her, but he has to ask all the same.

"I have to be there," she says, gently, but with an edge of desperation.

Just a little while longer. She can hold it together for a little while longer. "But thanks. For trying to make it easier."

"I understand," he says, as gently as he can. He can't imagine letting anything keep him from getting to Bucky now, and he's sure she can't either. "And okay. Just ... lean on me if you need to."

"Same," she murmurs. "I'm still here for you, Steve. No matter what."

He puts an arm around her shoulders and gives her a light hug. "I know," he assures her. "I'm not going anywhere either."

A second passes, and a rueful expression crosses his face. "Well, except for the part where we're both going somewhere else now. And speaking of, we should get a move on."

She huffs the smallest possible breath of a laugh, and nods, tucking her head briefly against his shoulder. "Okay," she agrees.

"I'll follow your lead, Cap. Let's get back down to the bike."

* * * * * * *

The location in question turns out to be a boatyard. Not ideal; difficult to secure or to clear; but not impossible. Far from it.

The Winter Soldier studies it from afar, examining angles and possibilities, and decides the warehouse-like building at the far end, presumably for boat storage, presents a good opportunity. Cautiously, he begins to make his way along the shore, then the dock, flitting between structures and staying low.

From her hiding place, she sees Nat nod, then motion forward. Sharon nods back, and slips around the corner of the boat she's under, then climbs aboard and pulls the engine cord.

It comes to life with a startling cough of noise, sending a cluster of disgruntled seagulls flapping up into the sky. As distractions go, it's an obvious one, but all they really need is for it to work just long enough that Steve can sling the shield and get Bucky moving in the direction they want.

He has a bare instant to determine if it's designed to try to lure him or get him to burst from cover, but to remain still is to die if he's been spotted. He dives into cover in the shadow of the sailing vessel he's near and scanning the area around for any human movement.

Edited 2023-05-10 00:18 (UTC)

The boat where he's taken cover is good-sized; twenty-eight feet long, at a minimum, with an enormous lead keel that keeps it steady and stable even in ocean swells.

Steve Rogers hits it like a hurricane. His shield shears off two of the supports, and then he throws himself at the boat itself like a battering ram, sending it capsizing over, directly onto the spot where Bucky had gone to ground.

He rolls into the middle of the boat, using its mast to keep from being crushed, and smashes his way up through the hull with his left arm to escape the trap they've sprung on him.

His left arm punches up through the hull – they're going to owe some poor boat owner a lot of money – and Sam drops Nat onto the hull, where she takes aim and fires with her Widow Bites.

Simultaneously, Steve leaps for Bucky's arm, forcing it back, trying to make sure it locks up and twisted behind him when the Bites hit.

Electricity sparks and crackles through his arm, disabling proper operation until he can do an inertial reset. He feels the target trying to wrench it back and twists violently at the waist, turning into the other man to prevent him from locking his arm.

As he does he pulls a pistol with his right hand and fires a four-shot burst beneath his own shoulder into the target, center mass.

"Steve!"

Steve twists, but he's too close to escape all the shots. As he crunches over in pain, a shadow swoops over the fight – Sam, holding the hook from a large crane nearby. As Nat tosses a fishing net around the Soldier's legs, Sam wrestles with the disabled arm, winding the chain around it and hooking it around his wrist.

He can't pull his arm free while it's disabled, but he can move his body. The Winter Soldier lets his weight hang from the chain and swings his legs up, kicking the redheaded woman in the gut with all his strength, net and all, then attempts to do a reverse somersault to pivot his body around instead of swinging his arm around. If he can, if he can gain the reset, he can tear free and finish the mission.

She's running, feet thudding over the ground to get her to the crane, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Steve, Nat, and Sam all swarming the Winter Soldier. Nat stumbles back from the kick, then wraps a nylon line around his ankles with a quick fling as Sam smashes into him from the sky.

Sharon scrambles up into the crane seat and slams the controls into motion. The crane, slow but powerful, begins to crank the line up, while Nat does her best to keep the Soldier's ankles and feet down.

The movement of the crane pulls him off balance before he can complete the reset twist, stretching him upward, partially immobilized. His face twists in a silent, agonized snarl, and he reaches behind his back with his right hand and grabs a silver ball grenade from his belt. He flicks his thumb to set it and throws it hard at the dock between the two targets.

He'll take damage from it, he knows, but the mission will be complete, and he'll heal. He should remain operational.

Sam swoops to cover Nat, while Steve leaps forward, shield at the ready. He slams the shield over the grenade and covers it with his body, but even so, Sharon can see how the blast rocks him.

Nat darts out from behind Sam's wings and points an arm; a thin grappling line shoots from her wrist and encircles the Soldier's right wrist before she hauls back, trying to keep him from reaching for any other toys.

He pulls with his right arm, trying to free himself, but can't do so... or not immediately. He makes the decision to hold off trying further at the moment, as they don't appear to want him dead, and he might be able to use his strength to advantage when they least expect it.

He dangles from the chain, entangled by net and line, and watches them in wary silence.

Sharon brings the crane to a halt and hops out, then runs to Steve. "Steve," she gasps, horrified, and tries to get him to turn so she can look at his torso. "How badly did he get you?"

He puts an arm around her, cradling the other in front of his stomach, and shakes his head at her. "Later," he says, and holds her gaze until she nods.

Still, she keeps her arm around him as they both turn to look at the Soldier – at Bucky. Sam and Nat stand, wary and watching, on the other side; Nat's expression might have been carved from marble.

Steve addresses the Soldier. Bucky. "Do you know who I am?"

His glance flicks down to where the man's clutching his middle, then to the blonde woman who's clinging to him, worried, and back to his face, assessing the situation.

He's told him this before, but it's worth repeating. "You're my mission," he says, flat and empty.

"My name," Steve says, stubborn. "Do you know my name?"

He waits a beat, then tips his head toward Sharon. "Or hers?"

Another, and he glances at Nat. "Or hers?"

He has no intention of revealing the details of the briefing he'd been given. He considers him in silence for a few seconds, then tips his head toward the woman at his side.

"She calls you Steve."

"Yes," Steve says. "I'm Steve Rogers. This is Sharon Carter."

He's looking at Bucky hard, and she knows he's hoping to see any glint of recognition. "You know us, Bucky. You know us both. All three of us," he amends, with a glance at Nat.

Why do they keep calling him that?

(I can do this all day)

Frustration rises, threatening to choke him. "No, I don't," he grits through clenched teeth.

"Yes, you do."

It's Sharon who says it this time, tense by Steve's side. She's quiet for a moment, then hums, low and pleasant and as clear as she can make them, the tune to 'Moonlight Serenade.'

He stares at her. Uncertainty flickers in his eyes.

(dance with me)

Abruptly-- "Is that why the lamp?"

Moonlight. Is that the connection? But why?

She steadfastly ignores the look Nat gives her. This is all beyond classified, and it's exploding all over them, but she doesn't care. If it helps him remember –

"Yes," she confirms, as a rising flood of hope almost chokes her. Had he noticed the lamp, after all? "That, and – and other reasons."

Steve's a steady, solid, hopeful presence at her side. "Brooklyn," he says. "Coney Island, the Dodgers."

The red-haired woman gives a sharp look to the others. She'd addressed him in his own language before, that he does remember. "они тоже русские?" he asks, glancing at her.

As he does, he shifts his right hand a little, pulling against the grappling line, spreading his palm open and upward to indicate lack of harm as he moves, slow and easy. She gives a sharp warning tug and watches him like a hawk, but doesn't try to stop his movement.

He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out the ceramic lamp, turning his open palm up so they can see it's not a grenade, then tosses it to the blonde couple.

Her heart leaps into her throat as she realizes what he's tossing, but she's still too sluggish to catch it in time.

Steve, though, is more than quick enough, even injured. He catches it carefully, then holds it out to Sharon, who lifts it for Bucky to see. "You bought this," she tells him. "In France."

First New York - he knows the name of the city mentioned, even if he doesn't know why the man was throwing it at him, now France? None of this makes any sense. How could he have-- when would he have, why would he?

"They're not Russian." The redhead answers him in English, and he thinks he sees a flicker of sympathy in her eyes, for reasons he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand anything that's happening. She continues, just as soft, "And neither are you, not really. Not originally."

Panic and nausea well up in him, threatening to drown him, and he twists wildly against his restraints, trying with all his might to tear himself free as a hoarse, raw cry escapes him.

"You're LYING!"

"She isn't," Sharon insists. "Neither are we."

He twists and tugs, his arm whining under the strain, and he has to be hurting himself. She sees Steve tense, but he doesn't move forward to stop it, either. "You aren't Russian. You're from Brooklyn. You were a Sergeant in the United States Army. And Steve Rogers is your best friend."

He throws his head back and howls, the cords standing out in his neck as the scream is torn out of him. As he does, he yanks his right arm toward him, jerking it away from the woman with all his might to try to get free.

The line cuts into his wrist and forearm, drawing blood, but the gambit works. He claws with his right hand at the chain above his left wrist, trying with desperate strength to wrench himself upward, trying to drag his body free of the restraints that anchor him to the dock below.

None of them, it turns out, can quite stand this.

Not the scream. Not the way he struggles, like he'd kill himself to get free. Steve, throwing caution to the wind, starts forward – with what plan, Sharon has no idea, she only knows he's reacting to the same agony that's ripping her apart inside – only for a scatter of gunfire to make him duck and whirl.

"Stand down, Cap!" comes Rumlow's enhanced voice, and Steve grips at his shield, apparently torn between fighting and running.

Nat suffers no such indecision. "We have to get out of here," she snaps. Steve throws an anguished glance at Bucky, and Sam spreads his wings, holding out his hand to her. "What's the call, Cap?" he asks.

She doesn’t wait for Steve to answer. He won’t leave his friend willingly, she knows it. He’s a better person than she is.

So she’ll just have to be the kind of person they need now. “You can’t save him if you’re dead!” She grabs Steve by the wrist and waves her free hand at Sam. “Take Sharon, get her out of here — Steve, come on, come with me!”

Steve's anguished indecision is blatantly visible on his face, and apparently that's more than enough for Sam, who leaps forward to grab Sharon – she struggles, reflexive, before putting her arms around his neck – and takes off into the air.

As the wind snaps her hair against her face, she looks over Sam's shoulder, keeping her eyes on Bucky until the very last second.

Without their efforts to keep him bound, he's able to rip himself free of the net and cables. As they fall away and he pulls himself up along the chain, he sees the redheaded woman tackle the blond man -

-- Steve, his name is Steve, Steve Rogers --

(Steve?)

- knocking him off the side of the dock and into the water below.

They go under and don't come up. The Winter Soldier drops to the ground and whirls his left arm in a circle, resetting it, then snatches a weapon from the first STRIKE agent to reach him and stalks to the edge of the dock.

He fires a spray of bullets into the water in a wide pattern, trying to hit anyone who might be hiding below.

As the water closes over them, his sanity returns. Heart aching, he grabs Nat and swims strongly down, hoping she can hold her breath for as long as they need. Once he's judged that their depth is safe, he strokes hard for distance, only kicking for the surface once Nat's breath starts bubbling from her lips.

They surface cautiously, but he'd managed to get them a good distance away. Not far enough not to hear the sound of gunfire, but far enough that no one's likely to spot them without some pretty impressive luck.

"Hold on to me," he tells Nat, grim. Once she's locked her arms around his neck, he dives once more, forcing himself to swim away, away from his best friend.

No bullets ping from the shield; no blood rises to mark a bit. He quarters the edge of the dock all the way to the end and back, scanning the area, while Rumlow orders a search, but there's no sign of them.

He can hear Rollins talking to Rumlow, low, thinking he's far enough away not to be overheard. "Did you see how they had him strung up? Interrogation, you think? Rogers never struck me as that kind of guy."

Rumlow snorts. "He's not. He's weak that way. But Romanoff'd do it, and Thirteen'd help."

"Think he broke?" Rollins asks. Rumlow shakes his head; the Winter Soldier can see it out of the corner of his eye. "Him? No way. He yells louder than that during reprogramming, the docs say. I'd kinda like to see it."

They surface again, even further away, and Steve swims in strong strokes for the shore, his head screaming and his heart aching.

Nat must have a million questions, but she keeps them to herself, for the moment, for which he's grateful. It was working, wasn't it? Was that why Bucky looked and sounded so tortured, why he tried so hard to break free?

What had they done to him?

They comb the area, but there's no sign of the targets or their allies. The Winter Soldier stares grimly out across the water before he turns to Rumlow. "Back to BaseOps." It's tight and controlled and absolutely even, revealing no sign of anything going on in the chaotic depths of his mind.

He has a report to make, and things to think about, if he can.

Who the hell is Bucky?

It was Sam who had come up with a new place for them to meet. "It's out of the way," he promises. "Ain't nobody goes out there anymore."

The out-of-the-way location he offers turns out to be an old dam, either no longer in service or mostly ignored. He flies her there while she tries to push down everything that keeps trying to flood up: fear, anger, hope, memory.

So many memories.

She's nowhere near through the shock, she knows, but she can push past it, through it. She can focus on the mission. SHIELD needs her. Steve needs her. Everything else can come later.

He drops down at the end of the dam through the cover of the trees and lands her as gently as she can. She looks pale and trembling, and he's pretty sure it's not because of their flight.

"They'll get here soon," he says, gently. The lady's got grit, that's for sure, but she's been through a hell of a lot today. "As fast as Steve runs, they could almost have beaten us here."

"Steve's injured," she reminds him, and that hits her all over again, like those bullets had smacked into her torso and not his. "He heals fast, but not that fast. And we've got to get those bullets out of him."

"We will," he promises. "We'll take care of him." Of both of you, he thinks.

"Want me to do a flyby back to look for them? I hate to leave you alone, though."

"That's okay," comes a voice from the doorway leading into the dam. "She won't be alone."

Sharon turns and pins Maria Hill with a bewildered, exasperated glance. "Hill. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," Hill replies, eyeing Sam. He gives her an easy smile.

"Just stopping by."

Hill doesn't smile back, and Sharon doesn't feel much like smiling, either. "Have you been here this whole time?" she snaps, moving towards the other woman. "We could have used a little more backup, Hill."

"Need to know basis only," Hill says, holding position and pinning Sharon with a cool stare. "You'll understand why shortly. Who's he?"

"Sam Wilson," he says. "Friend of a friend."

"My friend," says Steve's voice, as his step sounds. Sharon turns to see him and Nat coming along the dam walkway, Steve still holding his middle, Nat's arm around him.

Damn Hill, anyway. "Steve – " Sharon comes swiftly over to him, her fingers gentle on his hand and wrist as she tries to lift them away from his torso. "How bad?"

"It's all right." He lets her lift his hand away, figuring she'll feel better if she sees for herself. "Not great, but it's healing."

What hurts more than the wounds themselves is the fact that it was Bucky who shot him, without even the slightest hesitation. He can't ignore that, but he pushes it away for now and meets Hill's eyes. "Sam can be trusted. Can you?"

She checks his front, back, and side, trying to determine if the shots went through and through. Not all of them did; at least two are probably still inside him. She meets Nat's glance with her own worried one as Maria Hill eyes Steve.

"Could've used a little of that paranoia earlier," she tells him, then jerks her head toward the interior of the dam. "Come on. We've got medical supplies. And there's something you all need to see."

Nat trades a look with Sharon, then moves to link her arm with Sam's. "Come on," she says, lightly. "Hill doesn't bite. Much."

Hill rolls her eyes and turns away, leading the way through a large blast door and into what looks like some kind of maintenance building. Sam and Nat go after her, and he rests a hand on Sharon's shoulder for a moment before coaxing her to walk beside him to follow the others.

She sets a light hand on his back, worry coursing through her along with the adrenaline that hasn't subsided and the fatigue poisons of having been awake for... hell, who knows, at this point?

Hill has medical supplies. They can patch Steve up, reconvene, figure out their next approach. She isn't giving up, not by a long shot. "Have any idea what this surprise might be?"

“No idea. But I guess we’ll find out pretty quick.” He’s not sure he wants any more surprises, but as Hill rounds the corner of the hallway ahead of them he sees Nat stop dead, staring wide-eyed.

Steve quickens his pace, only to stop as well, startled, on spotting Nick Fury in a hospital bed in the next room. “About damn time,” Fury drawls. “Where have you been?”

Sharon stares. "Where have we been?" she manages, finally, forcing words through her shock. "What the hell were you playing at? We thought you were dead!"

"You were supposed to," Hill puts in, unruffled.

"I damn near was," Fury points out. "Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, and one hell of a headache."

"Don't forget your collapsed lung," another voice puts in. It's a doctor, Steve thinks, or some kind of white-coated medic anyway.

Fury grunts and tries to push himself up a little in the bed. "Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

"Good?" Nat manages, though her shock. "They cut you open! Your heart stopped!"

"Tetrodotoxin B," Fury tells them. "Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

Nat looks like she wants to punch something. Steve, already in a state of shock from everything that happened at the boatyard, shakes his head. "Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?"

Hill shrugs. "Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful."

Nick, annoyingly, looks as though this makes perfect sense. "Can't kill you if you're already dead," he points out. "Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust.

"Smart of you not to trust STRIKE, it turns out," Steve says. Rumlow had been standing right there watching when Fury had 'died', as he recalls. "But you could have trusted me, Nick."

"I did," Fury points out. "That's why I came to your apartment. But you're a bad liar, Rogers. We figured burdening you with trying to hide it would be a problem."

"Can we talk about the specifics later?" Sharon asks, before striding over to grab the medic by the arm.

"Hey. We've got multiple GSWs here. Could you maybe go ahead and get those bullets out of Captain America so he can stop bleeding internally?"

"Would it have killed you people to mention we had wounded?" the medic snaps, dropping the scan he was reading.

"It's fine, I'm probably healing around them already," Steve tries to reassure him. "Check Sharon over first, she's been through something of an ordeal."

"I didn't get shot," Sharon says, a little of her Aunt Peggy's gimlet glint in her eye. She stares down the medic.

"Priority is Captain Rogers. And by 'priority,' I mean check him out right the hell now."

Sam purses his lips in a silent whistle and leans carefully back against the wall, hands in his pockets. Nat lets out a breath of laughter. "I'd listen to her," she calls."

"Everyone can get in line," the medic says, sharply. "You first, Captain. Welcome to my clinic. Sit here."

Steve sighs and sits on the stool the man drags out from under what's clearly a makeshift work table, and pulls off his shirt.

"Nick, how much do you know about what's going on?"

"Hill filled me in on our shooter," Fury says, dry. "I kind of figured Pierce has gone bad for myself."

Sharon parks herself next to Steve, keeping an eye on the medic as he starts to check him over. "You said SHIELD was compromised," she says – to Nick, despite not looking at him. "By who? Or what?"

"That's what I was trying to find out when I sent Romanoff to collect intel from the Lemurian Star," Fury says. "Someone was spoofing my security access and locking me out of things. I needed information that couldn't be tampered with. But I didn't get a chance to tear it apart. I was kind of hoping the two of you might have."

Steve hisses in a quiet breath and reaches for Sharon's hand. There's no way to soften this blow, but he can at least give her something to hold on to. "HYDRA," he says, succinctly. "SHIELD's been infiltrated by HYDRA. There's no doubt."

Sharon stares at him, barely able to feel his fingers on her hand.

"No," she says, blank. She can feel the slow seep of horror rising like bile, but it's all very distant. "HYDRA? But they're, they're gone. You ended them. Decades ago."

Behind them, Nat murmurs, "It was Operation Paperclip. That's where it started. After the war, SHIELD recruited scientists with strategic value. And among them--"

Steve cuts her off there. "Arnim Zola." The wave of bitterness that washes over him threatens to drown him, but he makes himself hold on. "He told us himself. He was still alive, sort of, his mind uploaded into some kind of computer bank in a compound at Lehigh. He wrote some kind of algorithm for Project Insight, something that's going to help HYDRA reach its ultimate goal somehow. HYDRA's been working to undermine SHIELD since the beginning."

Zola.

She feels like she's going to be sick. Slowly, carefully, she sinks to her knees to look up into Steve's face, holding onto his hand. For a moment, it's like they're the only two people in the room. "Steve," she murmurs. "Zola?"

Zola, who had tortured and changed Bucky, whose trauma had lasted for months upon months – and now, apparently, decades upon decades.

The look in his eyes is bleak, the set of his jaw tight. He knows what she's thinking; he's been thinking it too, ever since he had a second to start putting the pieces together, looking back at the horrific string of images the scientist had played for them.

"Zola," he confirms, low and steady. "It was him."

Did Aunt Peggy know? Did she agree to this, for some impossible reason?

Her throat works, and she squeezes Steve's hands as everything she ever knew crumbles around her. She blinks, then looks over her shoulder at Hill and Fury. "Do we know their plan?"

"I figured out it had something to do with Insight, but this is the first I've heard of any algorithm," Fury tells them. "We need to find out what it does."

"Sitwell might know something," Nat offers. Her gaze is shuttered, her expression thoughtful. "He was on that ship."

"Then we've got to talk to him," Steve says. "I can--"

"You're not going anywhere," the medic snaps.

"Besides," Sam puts in, "you'd be recognized in a flat second if you tried to get anywhere near him."

"I'll talk to him."

Sharon's voice is grim. She squeezes Steve's fingers, then lets go and stands up, looking around at the others. "I was reporting to him at the Triskelion when they kicked off the manhunt. He'll want to meet with me if I say I have intel."

"You can't do it alone," Steve argues. "You've already been - they might suspect, you can't--"

"She won't be alone," Sam interrupts, easily. "I'll fly backup."

"And I'll go along too," Nat says. Her smile is artificially bright, but there's something real about it all the same. "It's been a while since we got to play together."

"Sounds good to me."

She looks back at Steve, and her expression gentles, despite the pressure she can feel building inside her chest. "See, Steve? It'll be fine."

He searches her face. "You're sure?" he presses. She'll know exactly why he's asking.

For a moment, she just breathes, very evenly. With Aunt Peggy so sick, there's no one on this planet who knows her better than Steve does. These days, she thinks he might be her best friend.

So he knows. And she knows, because all of this has hit both of them in their most vulnerable of spots. "I've had a shit day," she says, softly. "Let me go take it out on Sitwell."

He searches her face again, and reluctantly has to concede. "Okay," he murmurs. "But be careful."

"Do I get a say in this?" Fury asks, eyebrows raised.

"No," Nat says, without missing a beat. "You're dead, remember?"

"It's like we can still hear his voice," she tells Nat, and is gratified when Fury rolls his eye at her.

Sharon turns back to Steve, glancing pointedly at his injuries. "Just get better, okay?"

"It'll be healed by the time you're back," he promises.

"You know I'm going to have to do surgery here, right?" the medic - or, well, maybe he's a surgeon, Steve realizes - points out. "Minor surgery, anyway."

Steve gives him a look over his own shoulder. "Don't worry her."

Nat swallows a laugh.

"You have bullets in you," she points out.

Bullets that were put in him by his own best friend, who he – they – thought was dead. For a moment, the world sways around her, until she forces herself back into control. "I'm already worried."

Steve studies her closely for a moment. "Doc? I'll be right back." Without waiting for an answer, he stands up, snags his shirt from the table and shrugs back into it, then meets Sharon's eyes and tips his head toward the door.

"Go on," Nat says. "Sam and I will talk a few things over in the meantime."

She has no choice but to follow him – the sooner he says what he needs to, the sooner the doctor can look at him – but she's still thrumming with worry when she follows him through the door.

"What're you doing? Steve, you need medical attention."

"And I'll get it. But I don't think that's the problem. Or not exactly." He walks back down the hallway to the blast door and opens it into the fresh air.

The dam bridge is only a few steps away. Steve braces his hands on the railing and looks down at the water, then turns to look at her.

"Sharon. I'm sorry."

The fresh air feels good against her forehead and cheeks. She closes her eyes to it, then comes to stand next to him, nocking her hip against the railing and crossing her arms over her chest. "Steve..."

Hell, she's sorry, too. She's sorrier than she's ever been in her life. But there's no way out but through. They have the mission, and the mission is all that counts.

But she can't tell him it's okay or it'll be fine. She can't imagine the world will ever be the same again, not for either of them. She shakes her head and looks up into his face. "I'll get the intel we need. And then... and then we'll see what we can do."

"Uh-huh." Grief weighs heavy in his chest, the same way he thinks it does in hers. It brings back a memory, and he lets the words come unthinking.

"I tried to push him away once, you know." He glances at her face, then looks back out at the water. "After my mother died."

As she watches him, as he speaks, something complex and cracked open runs over her face before she shoves it away again.

But it leaves a bruise behind. Or maybe that's just her aching heart and sore chest. "Somehow I think that didn't fly with him."

She gives him a small, sad smile. "Right?"

He nods. "I told him I could get by on my own. He just smiled, and said I didn't have to. That he was with me to the end of the line."

Steve looks away from the water below the dam and holds her gaze. "You don't have to, either. I know how much you're hurting right now. Who better?"

Every now and again, she prods at her grief, looking to see if the oceanic swells of it have abated. It hasn't lessened with time, exactly, but it's grown more quiet. Quiet enough that she'd almost forgotten what it felt like to drown in it.

Now it rises up again, lashing with hurricane force, and she swallows, hard, her arms tightening. To the end of the line. And he had been... or so they'd thought. "I know you do."

Every word fights her. She tugs each one out, stubbornly determined, even as they stick like the tape that had been over her mouth. "But if I let myself think about it, I – "

She breaks off there, choked, and breathes for a moment longer before looking back at him. "I can't fall apart. Not yet."

"Okay. But when the time comes." Steve rests his hands lightly on her upper arms, not wanting to pull her into an embrace against her will in light of what she's just said, but wanting her to know he's here.

His glance catches on the marks on her face, and sorrow fills his eyes. He can't imagine any circumstance under which Bucky would ever, ever have done such a thing, if he were himself.

Of course, he'd never imagined his best friend shooting him, either.

"We'll get him back," he murmurs. "He's in there somewhere. We'll help him find his way out."

He looks her over and his eyes fill with so much sadness that she can't help herself, she has to step in to put her arms around him – carefully, not wanting to hurt him or press against his wounds. "Yes, we will," she promises, low but fierce.

When she pulls back, she reaches up to hold his head in her hands, her fingers against the back of his neck. "I can't worry about me right now, so let me worry about you, okay?"

Her smile is small, but real. "You watch my back and I'll watch yours."

“Deal.” He bends his neck under her fingers, tipping his forehead against hers. The last two years have given him a level of ease with her that he hasn’t had with anyone else but Bucky, and right now they both need that.

She can't imagine the last two years without Steve, and the thought of the last twenty-four hours without him strikes a chill deep into her bones. His forehead against hers helps her relax, just a little, and she breathes a bit more easily.

"After," she murmurs. "We can talk about it all after. I'll bring the Scotch. But until then..."

She shakes her head gently against him. "I'm sorry, too, Steve."

His breath shudders deep in his chest, a tremor running through him. "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky," he whispers. "The way he looked at me just now...."

The words refuse to come, threatening to choke him. He swallows, hard.

"We'll get him back."

They have to.

"I know," she says, helpless in the face of his agony and her own. All the times Bucky looked at her like she was the center of the world, with love and affection and humor and so much more – how he knew her better than anyone ever had – and somehow, he still could stare at her with that blank, bewildered expression.

"I know. We will, I promise."

"We will." He puts every bit of certainty into it, leaving no room for doubt. They will, because the alternative is unthinkable.

"You sure you don't want me to come with you to get Sitwell?"

"I'm sure that I don't want you to heal up around those bullets and make it harder to get them out."

She puts a little more strength into her smile. "Nat and Sam and I can handle Sitwell. He's a coward."

It's probably too late for that, but there's no point in making her feel worse by saying it.

"Okay. Go get him," he says, instead. "And then we'll clean house."

"You got it, Cap."

She steps back and catches his hand in hers, then gives a light tug. "Come on. Let's get you back in, and then we'll head out."

* * * * *

He prides himself on being a man who's not easily rattled. You don't get to where he has in SHIELD without having some aplomb in handling the unexpected, and you certainly don't rise among HYDRA's ranks if you let every little thing get to you.

Still, Jasper Sitwell has to admit that the last few days have been a little stressful. Not that he's going to let anyone see that. Just like he hadn't let himself show a flicker of reaction when watching Secretary Pierce handle the asset.

He hadn't known anyone could scream quite like that. He's surprised the asset hadn't lost his voice long ago. Maybe that's why he rarely speaks.

It doesn't matter. They're back on track, with only a slight hitch. Rogers and Romanoff may still be in the wind, but the work goes on, and soon the Insight helicarriers will be in the air, and then it won't matter what Captain America thinks or says or does, for the few moments that he's still walking around before he ends up relegated to the annals of history where he should have stayed.

He smiles at the senator and waves him off down the steps. Stern's a useful man to know, and it never hurts to keep all the connections properly in play.

The Winter Soldier still has her phone. She accepts a burner from Hill, settles onto the back of Steve's bike with Nat at the helm, and hangs on as they speed back into the city, Sam soaring overhead.

She and Nat are used to moving around undercover. Sam's a little less comfortable with it, but a pair of sunglasses and a newspaper and he manages to relax at the café table where they put him. Once everyone's set, Sharon dials Sitwell's number from the burner, and brings the phone to her ear to wait.

He pulls his phone from inside his jacket as it starts to ring and frowns at the screen, which is showing an unknown number. How whoever it is got his number is a question for another day, if it's not someone authorized. He flicks the accept icon and raises it to his ear so no one else can overhear.

"Yes?"

"Agent Sitwell."

A bitter taste floods her mouth, but she keeps her tone professional. "This is Agent Thirteen, reporting in."

Surprise rockets through him. He hadn't realized she'd survived that mess at the memorial. "Agent Thirteen. I hope you have some good news for me."

"I do," she assures him. "But I'm under the radar right now. Can you meet me?"

"I'm a busy man, Agent. What do you mean, you're under the radar?"

Her record has her as diligent, a rules-follower, deeply loyal to SHIELD, and highly skilled. It makes sense for her to be staying under cover if she's trying to avoid being executed or kidnapped again, if the asset were to make another try, but he's not supposed to be aware of that.

"I mean I have access to Captain Rogers, and I'm trying to maintain it without him getting suspicious."

Her jaw tightens, but she has this one card left to play, her ace up the sleeve. "Hail HYDRA."

He nearly jerks to a stop, and waves for the other agents to go on ahead, signaling that he'll catch up.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you, Thirteen?" he murmurs. "Okay. I'm listening."

Bringing Rogers in would be a coup the likes of which he hasn't had in a while, especially in light of STRIKE's failure to capture him multiple times now, not to mention the asset.

She's not sure she'll ever wash the slime of those words out of her mouth. There's nothing to do but power through. "Look to your left."

When he does, she catches his glance and nods at him. "Start walking. I'll meet you at the bottom of the stairs and bring you to a secure location."

He doesn't see any sign of Rogers in the area; just other people having lunch, talking on phones, reading the newspaper. No one seems to be paying attention to him, much less her. She must have sneaked away on some errand and gotten clear, but she's right that they'll be noticed if they're out in the open for long.

Sitwell nods back and starts down the stairs as he disconnects the call and puts his phone away.

Just being near him makes her want a shower, but she greets him with professional warmth and walks with him, chatting lightly, around the block and through the neighborhood to the building they'd identified earlier. She takes him up the stairwell to the roof, then allows him through the door first.

It locks behind her, slamming shut with finality in a way that makes Sitwell look distinctly nervous.

He should. He's a goddamn traitor. Sharon's smile sharpens. Finally, she can vent a few of her frustrations. "Now that we're alone," she says. "Why don't you tell me everything you know about what HYDRA plans to do with Project Insight?"

Goddammit. Sitwell arranges his expression into one of mild displeasure. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do." She moves towards him, pleased to see him step back.

Like she told Steve: he's a coward. "And I really wouldn't mind beating it out of you, so by all means, continue to stonewall me."

"I can't tell you what I don't know," he snaps, taking another step back across the roof and keeping a wary eye on her hands. "So why don't you stop wasting both of our time."

His phone is in his pocket, but if he can just get a hand on it he can signal for help.

"Oh, it's definitely not a waste of my time."

God, what a rat he is. She feints at him, sudden and sharp, and in the same moment, a foot reaches behind Sitwell to trip him up as he moves backwards to get away from her.

Sharon's voice is conversational. "Is it a waste of your time, Nat?"

"Not even a little bit." Romanoff sounds smug, damn her. He lands awkwardly on the rooftop, scraping both hands against the gravel-covered surface hard enough to bleed as he scrabbles backward like a crab and scrambles back to his feet, trying to get them both in view. "Jasper's been a bad boy, wouldn't you say?"

Sitwell sneers at them. "You two are crazy, do you know that?"

"A very bad boy." She keeps moving towards him as Nat flanks him, keeping a watchful eye to ensure he doesn't reach for his phone.

"We might be. But you're a fucking traitor, and that's worse."

He scoffs. "Please. As if SHIELD's done anything but fight a useless holding pattern for decades. HYDRA's going to ensure freedom from chaos. We're going to save the world. Your way of thinking's limited."

They're backing him slowly towards the edge of the roof, which he doesn't like, but it's not like either of them are murderers. Maybe he can stall long enough to break for the door.

"But it's not too late for you to do the right thing."

"It's like you want to be punched in the face."

And, god, she wants to punch him. His shoes scuffle against the edge of the roof, and she reaches out to grab his shirt. "Careful there, Jasper. It's a long fall."

He manages to keep himself from jerking back as she grips his shirt - he'll have to have it cleaned, but recoiling would have a bad outcome - and sneers at her again.

"Do you really think this little game of yours is going to work? Your threat's empty."

Not if she actually wants information from him; not that he's going to give her any.

She gives him a long look, then shrugs and lets go of his shirt. "Yeah, maybe."

There's a beat, and then she adds: "But hers isn't."

Nat strikes like a snake, kicking Sitwell square in the chest and sending him plummeting over the edge of the roof. As he screams, Sharon glances over at her friend. "I feel like this whole 'bad cop/worse cop' thing is really working for us."

"Mm-hm," she agrees. "Besides, it's fun. We should really do this more often."

The pitch of Sitwell's scream changes, and Nat shades her eyes to look up as Sam soars from below into the air above them, his hand firmly wrapped in Sitwell's shirt collar. "Think he'd let us try the wings?" she asks Sharon, as Sam dumps the other man back on the roof and comes in for a landing. "They look fun, too."

"We can hope."

She comes to squat down by Sitwell, hands dangling between her knees. "So. Let's try this again. Tell us what you know, or next time maybe our friend here won't be quite so quick on the draw."

He pushes himself up to his knees and raises both hands in the air, trying to ward off the madman with the wings, or anything else. "Zola wrote an algorithm!" he gasps. "For the Insight helicarriers."

Sharon frowns at him. "What algorithm? What does it do?"

"It chooses Insight's targets." Sitwell edges backward on his knees, only to freeze as the man takes a step toward him, blocking his escape route.

"The asset's effective, but he can only target a few people at once. Insight can do more."

"The asset."

Cold fury lands like a rock in her gut. "What do you know about him?"

"HYDRA's secret weapon." Maybe that's it, she's trying to protect Romanoff and Rogers. If he can turn her toward the asset - well, he'd like to see her try and it would sure as hell solve the problem he's got now. "He eliminates problems. Has since the beginning."

She has to return to this question of the algorithm, but she can't stop herself.

"How do they control him?"

"There's a program. They use it to activate him, before giving him his targets." He's babbling, he can hear it, but he can't stop himself, and besides it's safer to talk about the asset than about Insight. It won't matter what they know about him, not when he's coming for them.

"They wipe his mind between missions, using electrical shock. It keeps his focus clear."

It's shit, but maybe there's something useful in it. If they have to rewipe him each time – she very, very carefully doesn't allow herself to think about that and what it means beyond the most superficial of levels – then it's because the program isn't permanent. Whatever they're doing, maybe it hasn't erased Bucky completely. Maybe it's only suppressing him.

Still a nightmare. Still torture and pain. But maybe, maybe, fixable. "This algorithm. How is it selecting targets?"

"Easily. The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it." Sitwell pushes himself up, staggering to his feet and shifting to put his back to the wall of the utility shed.

"Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Anything and everything. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future."

Her blood runs cold.

She's horribly afraid she already knows the answer, but she asks anyway. "And then?"

Edited 2023-05-11 19:11 (UTC)

He's said too much. Cold horror grips him. "Oh my god," he whispers. "Pierce is gonna kill me."

Sharon shoves forward and grips his shirt again, shaking him. "And then what?" she demands.

It jerks him out of his own thoughts, and he grabs her arms, ignoring the way the man starts forward. "You have to protect me," he demands. "You have to! He'll send the asset after me."

"If we're going to protect you, you'd better make it worth our while," Sharon warns. "Intel and anything else you can give us."

It's a devil's bargain, but it's also the only way he can see to survive. "Okay. Okay. It's a deal."

Sitwell licks his lips, his glance shuttling back and forth between her and Romanoff. "You wanted to know what happens after the algorithm chooses the targets? The Insight helicarriers scratch them off the list. A few million at a time. And HYDRA takes over. Everything."

Sam exhales, explosive, and Nat swears, low and under her breath. Sharon looks up at her, clinging to her control, unable to stare directly at the swirling mass of panic that's trying to set in. "Insight's locked down," she murmurs. "We'll need access."

"You and what army?" he snaps. "Are you out of your tiny little mind? There's no way in there that won't get you noticed."

"No one asked for your opinion," she tells him, and stands up, gesturing for Sam to watch their captive before she catches Nat's glance and tips her head to the side, indicating a spot where they can talk.

"Don't get any ideas," she hears Sam tell Sitwell. Nat doesn't bother looking around.

"We knew it was going to be bad," she murmurs. "But this? We're going to need help."

"Yeah."

They need help, but is there any to be found? "Any chance Tony's back in business?"

"I can try. He was pretty determined about being out of it for good, especially with what happened to Pepper, but for something like this? Maybe."

She frowns, thinking. "Do we know when Insight's scheduled to launch? I didn't have the security access for that one."

"Let's shake our magic 8-ball and find out."

She pitches her voice louder. "Sitwell, when is Insight launching?"

"Tomorrow," he calls back. Nat's pretty sure that's vicious satisfaction in his voice. "A little over sixteen hours away. Which means you won't have time to do anything about it."

"You should be more worried about that," she advises, looking over at him. "You haven't given us much reason to keep you breathing yet."

"Damn," she mutters, crossing her arms. "We've got to get in there."

Sharon looks back at Nat, brow furrowed. "He bought that I might be HYDRA. It's possible more of them will, too. Maybe I can get in that way."

"By yourself? And do what?" she counters, eyebrows raised. "That's assuming they aren't using SHIELD clearances as well as only assigning HYDRA personnel to the project."

"And get the rest of you access so you can use what will undoubtedly be a brilliant plan."

She sighs and scrubs at her face, then winces as her hand rubs over the raw markings around her mouth. "I don't know, Nat. But we have to get a foot in the door somehow."

Nat scowls. She doesn't like it, but Sharon's got a point. "I can't believe he bought you might be HYDRA," she mutters. "The only one less likely's Steve."

She stares over at Sitwell, thinking. "But if he did... would Pierce?"

Sharon shakes her head. "I don't know. The only thing going for that plan is the assumption that they don't even trust each other enough to know who's involved and who isn't."

Nat's got that look on her face, the one that says she's putting pieces together. "Maybe we bring him back to base, talk it over with the others?"

"Better strip him of any and all tech first," she suggests. "The last thing we need is for STRIKE to descend on Fury. Or James."

Her flinch is miniscule, but Nat knows her too well. She'll see it. Sharon nods and takes a deep breath.

"Do it. Then hit him with one of your Bites," she suggests. "That should short out anything else he's got on him."

Edited 2023-05-11 23:54 (UTC)

"Good idea," she says, lightly, even while her eyes narrow. She and Sharon are long overdue to catch up, but it's going to have to wait a little longer. "He'll hate it, which makes it even better. Come on."

She tosses her hair back over her shoulder, saunters over to Sitwell, and gives him a brilliant smile. "Hold still. We're about to get up close and personal."

Sitwell flinches back from her, but Sam puts his hands on the man's shoulders and forces him to sit still as Nat searches.

Her mind whirls. Bucky, the helicarriers, the algorithm, Pierce. How can they stop them all? How can they save Bucky and destroy the rest?

What happens to SHIELD when they do?

She finds his phone and a second phone, which she considers for a few moments before destroying both. The intel would be good, but they'll just have to coax Sitwell to give up anything they need, and the risk of being tracked is far too high otherwise.

"Better back up a step," she advises Sam. Sitwell's eyes widen in alarm. "What? No! We had a deal--" He breaks off there with a gargling sound as she flicks one of her Widow Bites at his chest and watches sparks crackle over him, dancing across his lapel pin before fading out.

Sitwell shrieks and shudders, then falls limp and silent, and Sharon sighs. "We'll need a car to get him back to base."

"Not a problem," Nat assures her. "There's a garage in the basement of this building."

"You are one scary lady sometimes," Sam observes. He looks like he's struggling not to laugh, and she beams a cheerful smile at him.

Edited 2023-05-12 00:40 (UTC)

A smile of her own quirks at her lips. "Alright," she agrees. "Then let's pack up and get the hell out of here."

* * * * *

In the time the team's been gone, Fury's managed to coax as much information out of Rogers as he thinks the man has to give, enough to have a better sense of just how well and truly fucked they are.

Alexander Pierce is HYDRA. How many others on the World Security Council are? Just how deep does the corruption run? Is there a way to rip it out at the roots and strangle it without destroying SHIELD in the process?

There has to be. Hopefully whatever Romanoff and Thirteen bring back will help. He's brooding over the problem, pretending to follow doctor's orders to rest by leaning back against the bed, when he hears a flurry of something at the outer door.

No one moves like Steve Rogers, he has to admit that. The man's across the room and into the hall like a shot... and then he comes back in and holds the door open for the trouble twins, who drag Jasper Sitwell in, with Sam Wilson bringing up the rear.

Fury feels his eyebrows rise skyward. "Is this a present or a problem?"

"Nick," Sharon says, wounded. "Please. We brought you your favorite thing: intel, in the form of a spineless turncoat."

She and Nat shove Sitwell the rest of the way into the room. Sharon dusts her hands and sets them on her hips. "The bad news is that HYDRA is utilizing an algorithm to pre-emptively identify anyone who might ever be a threat to them. They'll use the Insight carriers to wipe them all out."

Her jaw sets. "And the helicarriers are set to launch in less than sixteen hours."

The look Rogers gives him practically shouts "I told you so," but at least the man has the decency to not say it aloud. Instead, he says, "Then we've got to stop that launch."

"Unfortunately, I don't think the Council's taking my calls any more," Fury drawls. "Not to mention trying to delay the launch is what got me shot in the first place. They're not going to do it just because we ask nice."

"Gee, if only we had a bunch of people around who are way past asking nicely," Sharon says, dry.

"There's that." Fury trades a look with Hill. She leaves the room as he turns his eye on Sitwell, who shifts uncomfortably before raising his chin to stare defiantly back at him.

"Now would be a good time for you to start talking," Fury says, mildly.

"Why? So you and your thugs can judge me for choosing a better way?" Sitwell lashes back. "I'm not going to defend myself to the likes of you."

"Careful, there, Jasper," Sharon warns. "We can still choose to leave you out in the open for Pierce and his cronies to find. Think they'll be lenient, when they find out how fast you spilled your guts?"

"A better way." Each word is quiet, but clear. Steve studies Sitwell, taking in every detail of how he's holding himself. "Is that what you think this is?"

"It's not the same as back when you were fighting, Cap," Sitwell lashes out. "The world's a violent, bloody mess that's busy tearing itself apart. HYDRA's the only one that's got the guts to do what has to be done to stop it, even if it takes a few precision strikes and some acceptable losses." He waves a hand at Fury. "Hell, even he'd call that a fair price to pay to protect the rest! Wouldn't you?"

"No. I wouldn't. What you're talking about is wholesale murder and slaughter of the very people we're supposed to protect, in the name of power and control," Steve says. "That's not acceptable. It never will be. I've never stopped fighting to prevent that, and I never will."

"Shut up," Sharon tells Sitwell, vicious. "Don't even pretend you think this is a better way. Be honest: the only benefit you can see to HYDRA being in power is that maybe you'll be on top, for a change. Right? But you were never going work your way up the ranks, Sitwell. You're nothing to them. And they'll kill you without blinking if we decide to let them."

"They'll kill you first," Sitwell spits. "You really think we weren't tracked? It won't take long for the asset to get here from downtown. And then we'll all be dead."

"Wait." Steve stares at him in shock. "You know where he is?"

"What's it matter?" Sitwell bluffs at him, attempting to be tough. "He'll come for you anyway."

"But we could go to him, first," Sharon murmurs, glancing over at Steve.

“Are you insane?” Sitwell stares at Sharon, open-mouthed. “Do you want to die? You—-urk”

He chokes a little, scrabbling to push himself away as Steve strides across the floor and twists his hands into his shirt, lifting him into the air so he can glare at him eye to eye. “Where is he??”

"The bank!" Sitwell gurgles, his bluster deserting him. "Under the, the Ideal Federal Savings Bank! That's where they're keeping him!"

“Keeping him?”

He doesn’t wait for Sitwell to answer. Steve drops him to the floor in a heap, already turning toward the exit, mind racing.

“Captain Rogers.” Fury’s voice is sharp. “Let’s not go off half cocked here.”

She can feel the tension thrumming off him without even touching him. "If we're going to get him, take down Pierce, and stop the helicarriers, we need a plan," she says, quiet.

"And we need you, Steve. I know – I know. You know I do. But we have to be smart about this."

He lets out a shaking breath, and nods to Sharon. She’s right, he knows it, and Bucky would be the first to agree.

“Then let’s make one,” he says, as Hill comes back into the room carrying a black case. Fury beckons to her and waits for her to set it down on the table beside him before he snaps it open and raises the lid to reveal three computer chips of some kind.

“If we can get these into the helicarrier command systems, we can take over control.”

"I might be able to sneak in," Sharon offers. "Undercover, as a HYDRA operative."

Saying it again leaves a bad taste in her mouth, but if they can do this quietly, they'll have a better chance of success. "But if those helicarriers launch, Steve and Sam are probably our best options for accessing them."

"If those helicarriers launch, we have until they reach an altitude of three thousand feet," Hill informs them. "At that point they'll synchronize with the targeting satellites. If we haven't stopped them by then..." She doesn't finish. There's no need.

Fury eyes Sharon. "We have to assume every single person on those boats is HYDRA," he points out. "You sure you can pass inspection, Thirteen?"

She gives him a level look. "Are you questioning my ability to go undercover, Nick?"

He holds her gaze. "I'm not questioning your skill, agent, I'm questioning the likelihood that your colleagues will buy it based on what they know of you."

He doesn't mention her aunt. He's well aware that she keeps her connection to Peggy Carter quiet, and why, but the point stands.

She exhales, explosive, and crosses her arms.

He has a point, and she knows it, but she doesn't have to like it. "I don't know."

"Setting that part aside for the moment," Fury says. "Work the problem. What would you propose to do if you got in?"

"Find some way to get everyone else access that doesn't involve explosions and gunfire," she says, frustrated.

"I'm making this up as I go, Nick. But it seems to me it's be useful to have someone on the inside."

"Can't argue that. The more the merrier, in fact." Fury glances around at them all, then lets his eye rest on Nat. "The Council members are coming in for the launch. If we get you a veil, think you could mimic Hawley well enough to pass?"

Nat's smile is bright. "Easily."

Fury nods. "That'd give us Thirteen in the bay, Romanoff with the council, and both Rogers and Wilson standing by for the swap and as air support. If we handle it right, we can take them down quietly and then maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left."

Steve stares at him in disbelief. "Salvage? We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down Insight, Nick. We're taking down SHIELD."

Everyone turns to look at him. A faint ringing noise begins in Sharon's ears. She stares at him, disbelieving. "Everything?"

True, SHIELD has been compromised. They need to burn HYDRA out at the root, but... "Steve – "

But she doesn't know what else to say. What is there? The very idea is impossible. Even thinking about it is like running face first into a brick wall.

"Everything. It all has to go." His heart aches, knowing how much SHIELD means to her; knowing what it means to her to be following in her aunt's footsteps, how she's dedicated her life to what SHIELD means.

What it was supposed to mean, anyway. What it apparently hasn't meant for longer than any of them had ever guessed.

"We know the rot goes all the way to the top, and we don't know how far it's spread, but it's a lot. How many people are working in those helicarrier bays? How many HYDRA agents are scattered across the world, trying to destroy it with SHIELD's protection and support?" He swings to pin Fury with a sharp look. "How long has this been going on under your nose without you noticing?"

Fury glares at him. "Why the hell do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed."

Steve shakes his head. "And how many paid the price before you did? No. It ends now. SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes."

But even as he says it, he turns back to Sharon. "I'm sorry. But you know it's the right thing to do."

Edited 2023-05-12 16:55 (UTC)

He holds her gaze, and because it's Steve, she doesn't have to try to explain. He knows. SHIELD has been her whole life, her career and her purpose. What she'll do when it's gone, she has no idea.

But he's right. She can't hide from that truth, no matter how much she wants to.

Sharon takes a deep, shaky breath, and nods. "I know."

Her voice is quiet, but determined. "I'm with you, Steve. No matter... no matter what."

"Thank you." Steve holds her gaze a moment longer, sympathy in his own, then turns back to Fury, who's staring at them both with a hint of dismay.

Steve waits while Fury glances at Nat, who shrugs, to Hill, who does the same and murmurs "He's right." Sam shakes his head before he can even ask. "Don't look at me, man. I do what he does, only slower."

Fury blows out a breath and meets Steve's eyes. "Look. I didn't know about Barnes."

He'd like to believe that's true. It better be true, because if it isn't, he doesn't know how he'd ever trust the man again, even a little bit. Steve shakes his head. "It doesn't matter if you did or not," he says, and wills himself to believe it. "This can't continue. Bucky'd be the first to agree."

If he could.

This will kill Aunt Peggy. She has to, she has to call Anna, make sure she keeps Aunt Peggy away from the news for a while. She should get Aunt Peggy out of DC. She –

A slight jostle at her elbow snaps her out of the spiral, and she looks up to see Nat watching her, sympathetic. Sharon nods back, tight, and looks back at Steve and Nick. "It sounds like we have a plan."

Fury looks back and forth between them before letting out a long breath. "Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain."

Steve nods to him and turns to Nat. "Can you use Sitwell's access to give Sharon the authorization she needs without giving him the chance to send up any alarms?"

"No problem," she assures him, while Sitwell makes a choked noise. "You're all insane. It'll never work."

Sharon closes her eyes and tries to count to ten.

One. Two. Thr –

Fuck it. "If someone doesn't shut him up, I'm going to break his jaw."

"If you do that he'll have a harder time sharing anything useful," Nat advises, lightly. "But I suppose as long as you don't break his fingers too he can write or type."

She smiles at Sitwell. "I wouldn't piss anyone off any more if I were you. If she doesn't, I will."

Sitwell scowls at her. "I'm not going to help you," he blusters. "The helicarriers will launch and Insight will succeed."

Sharon gives him a long, level look. "It won't," she says, flat. "Whether you help us or not. Your only choice is whether we leave you to HYDRA's tender mercies, or try to protect you."

"Either way he's done. We're not going to have another Zola."

It burns through him like acid. If they'd dealt differently with Zola in 1945, rather than recruiting him, would HYDRA have ever gotten a foothold inside SHIELD? Would Bucky have been rescued decades ago?

Which reminds him. He turns a sharp look on Sitwell. "What did you mean, 'keeping' him? The Winter Soldier."

"What, you think they let that maniac run around free?" Sitwell sneers. "They let him out for missions. That's all I know."

He sees a muscle in Steve's jaw twitch and moves fast, putting himself between him and the bald man with the big mouth.

"He's just trying to rile you up," Sam says. "Trying to get you to make mistakes. He ain't worth your time, man."

Sharon comes forward, too, to Steve's side.

"We can go after him tonight," she murmurs. "Get him off the board. Bring him somewhere safe."

Steve's jaw works again before he jerks his head in a sharp nod. "Nat, see what you can do about that access, and then let's lock him in a room somewhere."

"Pretty sure there's a cistern around here somewhere," Fury offers, dry. "Could use that."

"Agent Hill, assuming you aren't on the watch list yet, we'll need to plan a way to get to where you can take over helicarrier command once we have it," Steve continues. "And we'll all need to figure out the timing, so that it won't be too late and yet the other side will be at the point of maximum distraction."

"No problem, Cap," Hill says, calmly. "We've got some toys down here we can use. Communication won't be a problem. I'll coordinate once I'm in place at the Triskelion."

Sharon nods, then goes to grab Sitwell by the arm. "C'mon, Jasper," she says. "Let's go talk about that secret HYDRA lair under the bank. You can tell us everything you know."

* * * * * * *

Once the usual pain of the procedure had cleared, restoring his ability to think clearly once more, he had given his attention to reviewing the parameters of the mission with intent focus.

The Insight launch is scheduled for the next day, but there are known threats to the operation. Threats that endanger HYDRA's goals. Threats the Winter Soldier can eliminate. If he does his part, then Command will be able to do his, and HYDRA's guardianship of the world will be complete.

The Winter Soldier reviews the files on the targets, assessing their threat level, and coordinates with Rumlow and STRIKE on the plan for the following morning. They consider and reject smuggling him into the helicarrier bays; the security risk is too high, and he'll need more flexibility to move if anything should go wrong. Rumlow and his team will handle interior operations; the Winter Soldier will ensure no one on the outside is able to stop the launch.

He leaves under the cover of darkness and takes up position near the Triskelion, hidden high up in the shadows of one of the aboveground hangars.

Once he's established, all that's left is to watch and wait.

The bank had been a bust. There'd been nothing there aside from a couple of HYDRA goons who didn't stand a chance against Steve's shield and a chair set up in the middle of an open space.

The chair had restraints. They all knew what it had been designed to do.

But their disappointment didn't stop the clock. She'd said her goodbyes and vanished into the city, stopping long enough to change and apply makeup over the bruises and raw, scabbing spots on her face.

She enters the Triskelion easily enough, and makes her way to the control room, where a few discreet taps of some keys unlocks a door in traffic control and gives Steve, Sam, and Hill a way in. That mission accomplished, Sharon paces slowly up and down the rows of computers and analysts, arms crossed, keeping a sharp eye on the pre-launch sequence.

Sharon peels off in one direction, and Nat silently wishes her the best of luck as she herself dons the photostatic veil and heads for the airport. It's easy enough for her to replace Pamela Hawley's driver, but taking out Hawley herself in an unpleasant fashion could be slightly awkward once things are over.

Luckily, it doesn't turn out to be necessary. Nat pulls the car around to the hangar where Fury's waiting with the helicopter, and settles in to explain to the British woman just what kind of trouble she's walking into. Between the two of them they're able to convince her to let Nat take her place and represent all their interests at the meeting with Pierce.

She leaves Hawley to Fury and adjusts the veil to reflect her new appearance, then changes clothes and heads for the Triskelion. She joins the other members of the Council as they meet Pierce in the lobby and makes acerbic small talk as she accepts the metal clip that gives her unrestricted access to the facility.

That could come in useful indeed.

The backdoor works, and he leads Hill and Sam to traffic control, grateful for the clarity that always comes once he's on the mission. So far, this coup of theirs is silent and bloodless. He has no illusions it'll stay either.

When they come to the locked door, he nods to his companions. Hill nods back, then activates the gadget she'd brought. From inside the room, they can hear the sharp yelp of pain from the techs as their earpieces short out.

A moment later, the door opens, and Steve nods to the tech who stands there, bemused, as Hill and Sam level their guns at him. "Excuse us."

Once the techs are out of the way, Hill takes a seat at the console. Her fingers fly over the keyboard, and she nods at Steve, who takes a breath. Thinks. Then leans down to the microphone. "Attention, all SHIELD agents," he says.

"This is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days, some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was, it's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well. I don't know how many more, but I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. They shot Nick Fury and it won't end there."

He pauses, then continues. "If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high, it always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not."

The microphone clicks off, and he straightens, only belatedly realizing Sam's looking at him with bemusement. At his quizzical glance, Sam huffs a laugh. "Did you write that down first, or was it off the top of your head?"

She looks around as Steve's voice comes through the comms, taking note of anyone who looks surprised, anyone who looks pissed off. There are more of the former than there are of the latter, and she allows herself a moment of small relief.

If she can control this room, if she can convince these colleagues, if they'll all stand for what SHIELD meant instead of what it became, they have a chance.

The announcement pours out over every communications system. He recognizes the name of his target as the man identifies himself and goes on to exhort anyone listening to help him stop HYDRA. It's clear he's just as much of a threat as had been previously established, and the Winter Soldier's mission is clear.

He uncurls himself from his hidden alcove as below him technicians and pilots begin to run for their aircraft, and leaps from rafter to rafter, heading for the tarmac.

Not one of them will survive. So be it.

Goddamn Rogers anyway. Rumlow can't wait to have that sanctimonious bastard in his own sights. He's always wondered if a supersoldier could survive a headshot, and promises himself that if there's a chance, he'll find out.

But first things first, and the order of the day is to see Insight launched by any means necessary. As branch teams make their way down to the helicarriers to prevent anyone on the hangar crews from acting on any stupid ideas, Rumlow leads the assault on the control room. They break in with ease, as it turns out no one's given any thought to controlling access within the building. That's their mistake.

Most of the analysts all look the same to him, hunched over their computer screens and terrified. He picks out one and stalks up to him as his team spreads out through the room. "Preempt the launch sequence," he orders. "Send those ships up now."

Rumlow. Her fingers itch to reach for her sidearm, but she holds her position. The tech shrinks into himself, then glances carefully up. "Um. I'm..."

He trails off, and Rumlow lifts his eyebrows. "Is there a problem?"

SHIELD. SHIELD takes the best of the best. SHIELD is the best of the best. It's why her heart breaks at the same time as it swells with pride, as the tech swallows hard. His voice is quavery but clear. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not gonna launch those ships."

He breathes hard, but stands his ground. "Captain's orders."

It's not worth arguing with the little shit, and he can make his point and get the job done both. He thumbs back the hammer and aims his gun at the tech's head.

"Move away from your station." His tone promises death if the man doesn't obey.

The tech flinches, but doesn't reach for his keyboard, and Sharon's had enough. Drawing her own sidearm, she stalks forward, her muzzle pointed directly at Rumlow's temple. There's a breath, and then a sudden flurry as every other sidearm in the room is released and pointed directly at Rumlow's treacherous heart.

"Like he said," she says, viciously quiet. "Captain's orders."

His own team draws as well, turning the room into a deathtrap of crossfire angles, but they're a fraction of a second behind the ones who only found their balls when Agent Thirteen moved. Rumlow watches her out of the corner of his eye, but doesn't give ground.

"You picked the wrong side, agent."

"That depends on where you're standing."

A little longer. If they can hold the helicarriers on the ground just a little longer, this will all go so much more smoothly.

He presses the muzzle of his weapon hard into the tech's head as he considers, then relaxes it back again. He removes his finger from the trigger, deliberately enough that everyone can see it, and lowers the gun to his side.

That's not quite enough, given the way he's being watched, so he drops it to the floor, ignoring the way the terrified tech jumps at the loud clatter it makes. What's more important is that it puts his hand where it needs to be.

Rumlow snatches the knife from his thigh sheath and swipes it hard across Thirteen's forearm, cutting as deep as he can.

His blade hits her like a hammer, cutting across already sore muscles and sending both Sharon and her sidearm to the ground as gunfire opens up around her. Rumlow grabs his secondary sidearm and aims once more at the tech; she pushes herself up on her hands and kicks out as hard as she can, sending the terrified man skidding across the floor in his rolling chair even as Rumlow's sidearm barks, destroying the keyboard and screen.

Looks like the rebellious tech gets to live for another few minutes. Rumlow jerks to the side, ducking low to avoid gunfire, and works the keyboard at the next terminal as rapidly as he can.

The countdown flashes, the clock resetting itself from two hours to zero, as a giant red OVERRIDE warning blinks on the screen.

Good enough. He turns to fire at the nearest agent and starts backing toward the exit.

Her sidearm had gone skidding beneath the desks. She rolls, keeping her head down, and reaches for it, then lifts to her knee as she tracks Rumlow with the muzzle. Her finger squeezes. The Kahr barks: once, twice, three times.

But Rumlow's still moving, so she gets to her feet, keeping low to stay out of the line of fire, and follows him, squeezing off shots as she moves. They spatter against the bulletproof glass of the fishbowl they're in. She can't even tell if she's grazed him.

To her side, a screen flashes, one word in glowing orange text blinking into life: OVERRIDE.

"Crap." She smacks her earpiece into life, hoping Hill's listening. "Hill! Rumlow overrode the launch sequence. Those carriers are going up now!"

Edited 2023-05-13 02:09 (UTC)

He can hear the distant sound of klaxons blaring as the Insight bay doors open, confirming launch success. Rumlow grins, fierce and triumphant, and ducks out of the control room into the hall.

He watches as the first helicarrier starts its ascent, followed by the second, only for his gaze to narrow sharply as distant figures streak by and leap from the nearby building - one with a shield, who lands on the flight deck below, and the second into the open air, where he unfurls metal wings and streaks toward the helicarrier's control sphere.

Whatever they're attempting, he has to stop it, but first things first.

A swarm of pilots bursts onto the tarmac, racing for their aircraft. "All SHIELD pilots, scramble!" their leader yells into his handset. "We're the only air support Captain Rogers has got!"

The Winter Soldier launches a grenade at the first plane before it's barely launched, bringing it down in a smashed heap of metal and flame. Pilots scatter, trying to find shelter, but there's none to be found as he fires the next grenade, and the next, bringing down plane after plane with ruthless efficiency and leaving the dead where they fall.

He hits the flightdeck of Helicarrier Alpha and launches into a sprint, shield up to deflect a barrage of bullets. One luckless HYDRA goon happens to be in his way once Steve rolls over a storage crate; he smashes the man up against another and grabs a grenade off his belt, then flings it around the corner to clear his way.

Over the earpiece, he can hear Sam engaging Bravo, the spattering report of gunfire following him.

There's nothing he can do about it now, even as anti-aircraft guns point their muzzles up into the sky, following Sam with an avalanche of shells. "Found those bad guys you were talking about!" Sam calls.

Pressed behind cover, Steve glances up. "You okay?"

"I'm not dead yet!" Sam yells back. Which maybe isn't as reassuring as he wants it to be.

He tosses a member of the flight crew into an engine turbine and watches as the aircraft spins, crashes, and explodes. Only one plane remains operational, and its pilot is revving the engine.

The Winter Soldier leaps to the roof of the plane and fires two shots through the canopy, killing the hapless pilot. He wrenches the door off and flings the corpse to the tarmac, then slides into the seat and scans the sky above.

One of the helicarriers shows evidence of shattered glass and damage to its targeting system command sphere. That must be where the enemies are attacking, which gives him his objective. He spins up the engine to full power and takes off at full speed.

"Falcon." Maria Hill would probably sound calm and controlled even while being sucked into a whirlpool. "Status?"

"Engaging!" Sam yells back. Steve allows a little of his focus to follow the sounds of Sam's fight, even as he himself barrels forward over the deck of Alpha. It's disturbingly familiar to be slamming the shield, his boot, himself into HYDRA goons while wearing this particular uniform.

But maybe Bucky will recognize it. Maybe it'll be just one more thing he can't quite explain.

Not that Steve has time to think about that just now. He bodyslams an armor-wearing HYDRA enforcer as Sam reports in. "Alright, Cap, I'm in – oh, shi – "

Whatever's happening, Steve doesn't split his focus by asking him to explain. Steve flings himself into the air, slamming two HYDRA soldiers to the ground with a stretch of his body and a strike of his shield, then lands lightly. "Eight minutes, Cap," Maria Hill tells him, and he lifts his wrist to reply. "Workin' on it."

Once inside, it's far easier to make his way to the control center, the large, open space that hosts the brain of the helicarrier. Steve types in the command that Hill had drummed into them, then switches out the target chip with the one in his belt before sending the whole thing home once more. "Alpha locked."

Insight's weapons are powerful, but slow. Too slow to wipe the winged man from the air, as agile as he is. The Winter Soldier watches as explosions paint the sky and realizes that the automatic tracking will not succeed.

Their approach requires something to be done to all three helicarriers; it must, given the way they are dividing their attack. That means they will come for the third. They will have to.

He will be ready.

He lands the jet on the upper flight deck and takes cover, waiting for the right moment.

"Charlie carrier's forty-five degrees off the port bow," Hill tells them. There's a pause, then two gunshots before her calm voice returns. "Six minutes."

"Hey, Sam?" Steve's sprinting, but even his top speed can't outrun a rocket. Like the one HYDRA is about to shoot at him. "I'm gonna need a ride."

"Let me know when you're ready," is the response, even as Steve leaps into the air and off the carrier's deck, an explosion going up behind him. "I just did!"

As he falls, Steve tries to spread his body, to increase the wind resistance against him, against the shield, and does his best not to feel the knifeblade of a frigid alpine wind, or to hear Bucky's scream echoing off the valley walls. A shadow falls over him, and then his arm is nearly yanked from its socket as Sam grabs his wrist, yelling as he pulls them both upward and onto the relative safety of Charlie. "You know, you a lot heavier than you look," Sam tells him, as they head toward the control center.

Steve shrugs. "I had a big breakfast."

Edited 2023-05-13 14:18 (UTC)

Their casual joking conversation gives their position away. Do they think they are safe, with the rest of HYDRA's agents having deployed to the first aircraft? They will soon learn otherwise, and his mission will be complete.

He charges from ambush and hits Rogers like a freight train, smashing into him with enough force to send him through the railing to the side and off the edge of the helicarrier.

"Steve!" The winged man races for the edge to rescue his comrade, as expected. As he snaps the metal wings open, the Winter Soldier grabs the nearest one and wrenches it hard, dragging the flyer back over the middle of the flight deck before he himself is forced to take cover against the hail of gunfire the man rains down on him.

The man arrows back toward the edge, clearly meaning to try to rescue Rogers before he hits the ground far below, but the Winter Soldier had prepared for just exactly this after their first encounter. He fires a grappling line, not at the man's body, but at one wing, and uses the resulting grip to yank him back and down onto the asphalt with stunning force. He jerks the line a second time with all his strength, and metal screams as the wing tears free of its harness and goes skittering over the deck.

The Winter Soldier doesn't give him time to recover. He charges forward and delivers a solid kick to his gut, sending the man over the edge and into freefall, his yells fading with distance.

This time, he doesn't freefall. Instead, Steve finds himself rolling along the hull of the helicarrier, unable to catch himself until he slams into a curving metal barrier. His earpiece crackles with Sam's voice. "Cap? Cap, come in. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm here. " He grips hard and hauls himself to his feet, then takes stock of his location. Not ideal, but he can make it work. "I'm still on the helicarrier. Where are you?"

"I'm grounded." Sam sounds exasperated, and more than a little guilty. "Suit's down. Sorry, Cap."

"Don't worry, I got it." He edges along the hull, then pries open an emergency hatch and lets himself in. Two down, one to go.

He watches from the edge of the flight deck as the Black man lands hard on the building below, from where he will not be able to interfere further with the Insight helicarriers. But Rogers might, he sees, as the man clambers up the side of the aircraft and reaches the dubious safety of a hatch.

His duty is clear. The Winter Soldier turns away from his vantage point and races for the interior. He has to beat Rogers to the control tower.

He jogs along the wire catwalk that leads to the control center, then slowly slows to a halt.

Because he's there. Bucky. The Winter Soldier.

He's planted himself like a tree between Steve and the controls he so desperately needs to get to. His expression is totally blank. Cold. Empty of anything other than flat focus. Steve struggles to find some evidence that his best friend is still there, but nothing of Bucky's cheerful color and liveliness is visible.

But he still has to try. "People are gonna die, Bucky." His voice echoes around them. "I can't let that happen."

Bucky does nothing, only watches him with that same cold, blank stare, and Steve feels something crumple in his chest. "Please," he whispers. "Don't make me do this."

Rogers pleads with him, calling him by a name that's not his, trying to elicit some reaction. He ignores it, all of it, and holds his position, protecting the control array.

All that matters is the mission. Nothing else.

Bucky doesn't back down. He doesn't move; he doesn't even blink. The pistol he holds is loose but ready at his side.

Steve breathes; lifts his head. Sets his jaw. If it's between saving millions of people and Bucky, he knows which choice Bucky would tell him to make. That doesn't make any of this any easier, but then, nothing's been easy since he woke up seventy years too late.

He offers up a brief hope that whatever Zola did to his best friend will keep him from getting too hurt, and bursts into action, slinging his shield along the walkway, directly at Bucky's face, and sprinting after it in the same motion.

He deflects the shield with his left arm and fires in the next instant, but the deflection has the unfortunate side effect of allowing Rogers to regain the shield. Bullets ping from metal and he adjusts the angle, trying higher and then lower.

But then Rogers is in reach, trying to fight past him, and he's able to brace against the shield and fire beneath it before the man brings it down and knocks his weapon from his grasp. The Winter Soldier falls back a step and draws a knife, then rushes him.

One of the shots grazes his side and Steve winces, but Bucky makes the mistake of launching himself forward. Steve meets him with the shield and his shoulder behind it, and Bucky's own momentum sends him flying back and off his feet.

It doesn't stop him, though. No such luck. He draws a knife and leaps back to the attack as Steve braces himself once more. Hit, block – he tries to dislodge the knife, but Bucky keeps hold of it. He blocks a kick with one of his own, then goes down as Bucky swipes out his knee. Steve lifts the shield to block the downward swing of the knife, then surges up, shoving Bucky back far enough that he can turn to the controls, fingers moving swiftly over them.

No. He staggers backward, shaking his head, then rushes back into the fight. Rogers is strong, but the Winter Soldier will die before he lets himself fail.

He slams a crippling punch with his left fist, one that if it made contact would shatter ribs and leave Rogers weakened and gasping, but the man catches a glimpse of the attack in time to turn away from the controls and bring up the shield between them. The force of the strike vibrates between them for a second, and then Rogers rushes him, pushing him back and driving him away from the console.

He blocks the next strike with his arm, ducks a punch, and takes another that rocks him back on his feet. As Rogers turns away from him and back toward his goal, the Winter Soldier screams in frustration and desperate rage, a hoarse, wild sound, and bodyslams Rogers into the railing, sending the two of them tumbling together over it and to the platform below.

As he hits the platform, he loses his grip on the chip. It slides towards the edge and comes to a stop... past Bucky, now in his way.

Bucky struggles to his feet and rushes him again, and Steve meets him head on, exchanging blow for blow. He throws a knee to Bucky's ribs, takes a shovel punch to his own. A flurry of punches later, and Bucky gets in an upward smack with his left arm that sends Steve flying towards the edge of the platform. He grabs for the chip as he slides past it, then pushes himself up to meet another attack.

Hit after hit, and he loses grip of the chip once more, but manages to get the upper hand. As he and Bucky both hit the platform, he kicks out, meeting Bucky's side solidly with his boot and sending him out into space before Steve leaps off in search of the chip.

Edited 2023-05-13 17:38 (UTC)

He lands hard on the glass and metal of the dome, taking damage, but he comes up with the other man's shield and sends it slicing through the air at him as he runs for the chip. It cracks Rogers across the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling, but he somehow manages to roll up into a coiled crouch behind the shield and deflects the shots the Winter Soldier fires at him.

Distance is clearly ineffective, so he closes it, drawing another knife as he does. He swipes the blade across Rogers' chest, his throat, forcing him to jerk back to avoid being cut - and as the man does, the Winter Soldier grabs his own right wrist with his left hand and uses the enhanced strength to rip downward, plunging the knife into Rogers' right shoulder.

The man yells and headbutts him twice, trying to break his grip and causing him to stagger. The Winter Soldier leaves the blade in place and flings him hard into the wall, then dives for the chip. If he can destroy it, the threat to Insight ends here.

He rips the knife out of his shoulder and tosses it aside, then springs for Bucky. Grabbing Bucky's right hand to make sure he can't destroy the chip, he wraps his other hand around Bucky's throat and lifts.

Bucky's strangled, infuriated cry stabs into him just like one of the many blades he carries, but he doesn't let go of the chip. Steve shifts his weight and slams him down into the glass of the dome, then gets leverage on his arm, forcing Bucky's shoulder down while he pulls the arm back. "Drop it!" Steve demands.

Don't make me hurt you more. "Drop it!"

He clutches the chip as tightly as he can and claws at the air over his own shoulder with his left hand, trying to reach Rogers and coming up empty. The man pushes harder, trying to restrain him, and the sound of something tearing apart in his right shoulder rips through the air between them, followed by his own agonized cry.

He could win. The thought makes itself known beyond his subconscious for the first time, blooming like an explosion. Rogers might be able to beat him. He could do what the Winter Soldier's never been able to do for himself. He could end it. This could all be over.

He's still struggling with shock and pain and bone-deep compulsion when Rogers flips their weight, bringing him down on his back with the other man's arm around his throat, strangling him. Choking for air, unable to breathe, the Winter Soldier scrabbles desperately at Rogers' hand.

Steve hangs grimly on, focusing on his form, focusing on keeping the metal arm down. He presses the bone of his forearm into Bucky's vein, blocking the flow of blood and cutting off his air, until Bucky goes limp, the card sliding from his hands.

Based on everything he's seen so far, he doesn't think Bucky's faking. He's like a dog with a bone, unable to stop himself from pushing forward. Steve lets go, hoping against hope that he hadn't hung on so long as to cause irreparable damage, then snatches the chip and gets to his feet, sprinting for the control tower.

Awareness returns slowly. He's lying face-down on the glass of the control dome, unrestrained and alone.

Rogers left him alive. It isn't over after all.

The Winter Soldier pushes himself up, hissing in pain at the discovery his right shoulder isn't working properly, and looks frantically around. One look is all he needs to see that the other man hasn't reached his objective yet. He snatches up his pistol from where it lies discarded and aims as best he can with his left hand.

The first shot tears into Rogers' thigh. Grimly, he corrects his aim, and tries again.

Maria Hill's voice is in his ear as he fights his way back up to the console. "Thirty seconds, Cap!"

"Stand by," he says, and reaches for the chip.

The third shot rings out as he's reaching for the targeting blade, and he feels agony bloom through his back, rip through his guts. Steve stumbles, slipping down, his legs gone suddenly senseless, and reaches down to touch the wet, spreading stain on the belly of his uniform, red seeping through the white stripes.

Thirty seconds. Fewer than that, now. The effort it takes to stand feels like he's lifting the whole damn helicarrier on his shoulders. His insides are ripping themselves apart, but he forces himself one step forward, then another. With numb fingers, he slips the chip into the targeting blade. "Charlie locked."

He watches as the final shot finds purchase and Rogers falls. He'll need to get up to the platform and confirm the kill, but he can hear the distant thuds of Insight's weapons deploying; they've reached altitude, and there's no one left to stop HYDRA's greatest accomplishment.

The Winter Soldier turns away and starts slowly across the dome, ignoring the shrieking in his head, the silent screams in his ears.

Hill's voice sounds, clear and crisp in his head as he slumps to the floor, trying to catch his breath. "Okay, Cap, get out of there."

But there's no time. He can't take the chance that Bucky will get up here and remove the chip, break it, rip this victory away from them. Steve lifts his wrist and speaks into the mic. "Fire now."

For the first time, Hill breaks, just a little. "But, Steve – "

"Do it!" The order burns his throat, his chest.

("There's not gonna be a safe landing. But I can try and force it down.")

He puts everything he has into the words. "Do it now!"

("I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance.")

Hill doesn't respond, not with words. But as the pounding of Insight's guns begins and the helicarrier shakes around him, Steve forces himself up and stumbles forward, reaching for the rail.

Edited 2023-05-13 19:20 (UTC)

He's climbed back to the middle platform when the helicarrier shudders beneath his feet, heavy ordnance tearing into the structure and ripping it apart, and the Winter Soldier staggers as he's torn from the darkness of his own thoughts into the harsh light of realization.

No--

Metal screams as the platform tears free, and he screams with it as he plummets. He crashes into the dome and doesn't have the chance to move before the platform's support girder lands on top of him, crushing him against the glass and pinning him in place from the chest down.

He doesn't jump down to the glass dome so much as fall. His legs give way as his boots hit the glass, sending him sprawling.

He'd found the shield. They've taken down Insight. He has one thing left to do.

Slowly, Steve drags himself over to where Bucky's pinned, then sets his hands beneath the girder and groans as he pulls up, trying to give Bucky space to move.

He struggles while the cannonade continues, while beyond them in the sky the other two helicarriers crash into each other and break apart midair, but he can't get leverage to shift the wreckage. He braces himself to try again, then his eyes widen as Rogers staggers over to help.

None of this makes sense. His mind is chaos, all his thoughts whirling and shrieking madness at him. Why won't this man give up? Why is he risking his own life here, now, to try to save him?

(but I knew him)

He twists on his side as the metal shifts and crawls out from under, then shoves himself to his feet and turns slowly to stare at Rogers.

Edited 2023-05-13 19:48 (UTC)

Steve lets the girder down with crash, then turns to face Bucky. Both of them are panting for breath; both injured, both hurting.

He can't take it anymore. "You know me," he insists, weary but stubborn.

Gasping for air, he listens in utter shock as the other man insists that he's familiar, that he should recognize him.

Nausea wrenches at him, and as everything in his body revolts, the Winter Soldier strikes out at him with his left fist and his voice both.

"No I don't!"

Just as he gains his feet, Bucky smashes him off them again. His voice is as raw and rough now as it had been when he and Sharon were desperately trying to get him to remember, before.

It's only the two of them now. But it's been only the two of them plenty enough times before. "Bucky."

He pushes back to his feet, breathing hard. "You've known me your whole life."

Why won't he stop?

(I can do this all day)

This time he backhands Rogers as hard as he can, a raw, wordless howl escaping him as he does. The force of the blow drags him around as well and sends him sprawling sideways against the girder.

Edited 2023-05-13 20:33 (UTC)

He goes sprawling. It's harder to get up this time, but he does it.

And he doesn't stop. Each word is slow, but stubbornly clear. "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

"Shut up!"

He slams into him again, crashing against the shield, and goes to his knees with the strength of the blow. He can't catch his breath, he can't keep his balance; the entire world is shifting around him, unsteady and unknowable as he staggers back to his feet and turns to face Rogers.

He's not aware of the desperation in his eyes, nor of the way his expression is drawn and strained.

He staggers to his feet, again. Again, again.

("I had him on the ropes."
"I know you did.")

As he stands, Steve rips the helmet from off his head and lets it drop, falling between the smashed glass panes to the Potomac. When he looks back at Bucky, his face – battered, bruised, and weary – is visible. "I'm not gonna fight you."

What's the point, now? Bucky can't stop what's happening to Insight, what's happening to HYDRA, and Steve can't take a single more hit from his own hands to Bucky's body.

He opens his hand and lets the shield drop. It plummets along with his helmet to the water below. "You're my friend."

You're my friend.

(you know us)

There's something about the angle of the other man's jaw, something about the shade of his hair, the quiet, steady determination in his eyes. The Winter Soldier stares back at him.

(You're from Brooklyn. And Steve Rogers is your best friend.)

It can't be true. It can't. He doesn't have friends. He's the Winter Soldier. He's a weapon. And the man in front of him, no matter what he says, he's--

His expression twists in rage, and he slams into the other man, who doesn't resist as he's knocked off his feet and flat against the surface of the dome. The Winter Soldier pins him there with the weight of his body. "You're my mission," he snarls, and slams his left fist into Rogers' face over and over, trying to obliterate the haunting, sickening familiarity of his features with each blow as he screams the only truth he knows.

"You're! My! Mission!"

Each blow hits with the force of a truck. His head snaps back again and again, lights flashing in his vision as pain explodes.

But he doesn't fight back. He doesn't even put his hands up to protect himself. And when Bucky pauses, his chest heaving and his eyes wild and desperate and agonizingly confused, he does his best to speak through the blood in his mouth. "Then finish it."

He's already been in a world without Bucky. He can't do it again, not knowing it doesn't have to be that way. "'Cause I'm with you... 'til the end of the line."

He's letting it happen, he realizes, even though he doesn't understand why. Beaten, battered, unresisting, Rogers doesn't move to even try to stop him as he raises his fist for the blow that'll silence his claims for once and for all. There's acceptance in the clear blue of his eyes, and he thinks he sees something like the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his mouth as he speaks - and when he does, the simple words destroy everything.

He stares down at Steve Rogers as his face shifts in some impossible way, becoming familiar. He's seen this kind of damage before, usually after another back-alley knock-down-go-round when he'd be helping Steve clean up in their little apartment, but this time it's worse, because he did this, he did this with his own hands. He's seen the trust and certainty and confidence that Steve's had in him all his life, and he sees it again now, and can't fathom how it's even possible.

Bucky stares at his best friend, the man he'd been ordered to kill, while the world falls apart around them, and hasn't the faintest idea what to do next.

One eye has swollen shut, but the other stays steadfastly on Bucky, whose fist is still raised and whose expression has cracked wide open. Steve can't quite tell – his vision is blurry, fading in and out – but it looks like there are tears glossing over Bucky's familiar eyes.

A shadow falls and he feels a lurch, as a section of the platform comes crashing down and smashes through what's left of the dome, shattering the glass and metal that are supporting Steve's body and sending him plummeting down towards the gleaming water below.

He grabs automatically for the girder with his left hand as the dome smashes apart and hangs there above the Potomac, watching in horror as Steve falls, the same way Steve had watched while he himself had fallen into an abyss of snow and pain and darkness so long ago.

He won't let it end the same way. He waits only long enough to see where Steve's body hits the water before he lets go, plunging deep into the river before he jackknifes into a dive and swims down after Steve.

Even this deep, light gleams from the metal of his arm as he reaches for him.

Things come in flashes:

Water, that he smacks into like a block hitting concrete before it enfolds him, dark and silent. Drifting down, down, down. A jerk and pull at his harness, and then air, and cool water rushing over his injured body, washing away the blood even as more seeps from bullet wounds.

Someone drags him to the bank, pulls him up onto the ground by the strap of his harness. He can't focus, keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, but among it all is a feeling he hasn't had in over seventy years.

Safety. Because Bucky's here with him. And Bucky's taking care of him.

He doesn't know what he'll do if Steve isn't breathing. With his right shoulder still dislocated and not yet healed, he's only got one arm to work with, and if he tries chest compressions with his left hand he'll shatter Steve's ribs--

Trying not to panic, Bucky carefully tips Steve onto his side, facing away from him, and is relieved beyond words when he coughs out the water in his lungs and draws a harsh breath. He lets him lie back flat on the shore and looks down at him.

He can't stay. Not with what he's done, what he's become. He knows that. But he can't leave Steve like this. A shudder rips through him at the thought.

Clumsily, he paws at his pockets, coming up with the phone he'd taken from Sharon. Sharon. Another shudder tears through him, a worse one. What he'd done to her, too-- there's no forgiveness. There can't be.

He taps it awake, holding it to his right hand to do so, and clumsily scrolls back through the call log, looking for anything that might help, anyone that he could trust, anyone at all. He can't be sure, so he sets it down on the beach next to Steve's hand and starts searching through his friend's pockets as well.

He drifts back to himself in pieces: there and gone again and back once more. It's not until he feels a hand rummaging in his pockets that he can even crack an eye – one, the other is still swollen shut – to gaze blearily at the shadow looming over him.

His voice is barely a murmur, drunk with pain and shock and the many blows he'd taken to the head. "Bucky."

"Shhh." He sounds more frantic than he'd like, but there's not much he can do about that. "It's okay. You're gonna be okay, Steve. I'm gonna call for help. Just hang on. Don't try to move."

Nothing useful in his pockets, goddammit, how had he been staying in touch with his team? Had he? Maybe it was in his helmet, in which case that's not an option, but there has to be something--

He spots a band at Steve's wrist and takes a closer look, realizing it's a comms mic. Very carefully, he lifts Steve's wrist and activates it.

"Rogers is down," he says, clearly. "Medical response needed, this location." Where the hell are they, anyway? He scrambles for Sharon's phone and calls up the coordinates, then gives those as well.

What's Bucky even talking about? Steve manages a smile, despite the pain of his split lip and cracked jaw. "Gonna be fine," he murmurs. "You're here."

And Bucky always, always takes care of him.

Guilt rips into him with sharp claws, twisting his gut and leaving him near-breathless with pain.

"That's right." Rough, barely audible, but he manages it. "I'm here. Now lie still, you hear me?"

He's not sure he could move even if he wanted to. His legs and arms all feel impossibly heavy, and his head feels like someone's been taking a baseball bat to it.

Another fight lost, and Bucky here, picking up the pieces, like always. "Had him on the ropes," he mutters, the words drifting along with his mind, before a thought occurs to him, sharp. He reaches for Bucky's arm and grips with surprising strength. "Don't go. Not again."

"I know you did," he returns, the response coming as automatically as breathing, without any need for conscious thought. Which is just as well, because he freezes like a wild thing with shock as Steve grabs the metal of his forearm and holds on.

"I'm here," he manages, after a pause that feels too long and a hard swallow to clear the knot in his throat. "Steve. Don't."

Every slight movement of his head makes his brain feel like it's sloshing around, battering against the walls of his skull. But Bucky says don't and he doesn't understand. Not that, not how Bucky's hair is so long, not the feeling of metal beneath his fingers.

Until he remembers. His hand tightens before he lets go, then wavers in the air as he reaches for whatever other part of Bucky he can grab onto.

Bucky's calling him Steve, and taking care of him. He remembers. Steve's fingers grip into fabric. "Don't go," he says, again, but this time it comes out as a plea.

Pain hisses through him as Steve gets hold of his other arm instead, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it's the absolute least fucking thing he deserves, and right now Steve could ask for anything and he'd turn himself inside out to give it. Ignoring the scream of his right shoulder, he manages to pull away long enough to fumble his right hand into Steve's grip instead and hold on.

"I'm here," he says again. Metal whines as he leans forward and reaches to cup the damaged side of Steve's head with his left hand as gently as possible, trying to keep him from moving. "Lie still. I fucked you up pretty badly, Steve. Don't make it worse."

He grips Bucky's hand. There's cool metal against his temple and cheek, and it feels good against his inflamed skin and dizzy head. His chest hitches with a breath of laughter that feels like he's ripping his own lungs and ribs apart. "Don't do anything stupid, right?"

Somewhere, through the ringing in his ears, he thinks he hears the thup-thup-thup of a chopper.

He doesn't realize he's crying until he sees tears splash on the star of Steve's uniform.

"That's right," he chokes out, unable to give the response to that call, not this time. "That's exactly right."

There's a helicopter approaching, skimming low over the water. There's nowhere here that's clear enough for it to land, but maybe they've got a team to drop, or a sling to rig, or - or if it's not help, they'll have to get through him first. Bucky keeps his body still and turns his head to assess the potential threat, waiting to find out which it'll be.

Edited 2023-05-13 23:42 (UTC)

The chopper loops once overhead, then hovers as a long line snakes out the door and a man shimmies down it. Sam goes as quickly as he can without risking slipping and breaking his neck, then lands heavily on the damp grass of the little island and retrieves the pistol he'd stashed at the back of his waistband. In a heartbeat, he has it aimed at the Winter Soldier, currently bent over Steve.

"Let go," he advises, his voice cold. Steve, Nat, Sharon – all of them have tied themselves up in knots over this guy. And he sympathizes; he does. But he's not going to stand here and let the damn assassin keep hold of Steve. "Back up."

Not a threat; not to Steve, anyway, and that's what matters. Moving with deliberate care, Bucky lifts his left hand away from Steve and holds it up in the air, trying to signal he's not going to attack.

He can't lift his right the same way, and Steve's still clinging to it. He squeezes his friend's fingers, then spreads his own, pulling himself free. "It's okay," he murmurs, for Steve's ears alone. "Your friends are here. It's gonna be okay now."

Bucky settles back on his heels and rises to his feet. He takes a step back, away from Steve, then another as he lowers his left hand slowly back to his side.

Sam keeps a close eye on him as he edges closer to Steve – who is reaching out, he sees. To the damn Winter Soldier, while he bleeds out into the mud.

"Steve, stop moving," Sam tells him, firming up his voice. He stares down the Winter Soldier, then touches at his ear, speaking to someone on the other end. "Yeah. We gotta get him out of here."

"Do what he says, Steve," he rasps, low and harsh, his eyes on the Black man who's watching him back. Bucky's careful to hold himself immobile, trying to minimize any appearance of threat.

Not that it's likely to work, but he doesn't know what else to do.

"Can you help him?"

"Oh, you wanna help him, now?" Sam says, sarcastic. "You tellin' me you weren't the one putting those bullet holes in him? Again?"

He comes close enough to drop to one knee by Steve, feeling his pulse and checking the pallor of his skin. "He's lost a lot of blood," he says, this time to the person on the other end of his earpiece. "Yeah. I know. Send her down."

Standing once more, he takes aim at the Soldier, covering him. "We can help him. Don't get in the way."

Bucky stays silent. There's no defense to be made, and he doesn't even try. He takes the man's anger as the well-deserved blow it is and absorbs it.

Instead, he takes a third step backwards, then a fourth, giving them all the room they need. He stops there, careful to remain in view so that Steve won't be worried.

Don't go. Not again. Guilt sears through every inch of him.

In response to Sam's call, a bundle lowers out of the chopper, quick and careful, and lands on the ground. The next moment, another figure – this one in rumpled slacks and a bloodied, wrinkled striped shirt – edges out of the helicopter's body and jumps down on a line that pays out as she goes.

She's in worse shape than Sam, thanks to... everything... that happened before, and her tussle with Rumlow. Climbing down the line wasn't going to be an option, but Nat has the tremors from her Widown's Bite and Fury's holding the chopper steady, so they'd rigged this up, instead: a line that lets her descend in a controlled fall, the wind blowing her hair into a golden cloud around her head.

Sharon reaches the ground and straightens, then takes in the scene before her. Sam, with his pistol lifted. Pointed at – her heart lurches, painful – Bucky. And between them –

"Steve." She grabs the bundle and moves swiftly forward and falls to her knees next to Steve, checking him over with light fingers before she cradles his head and speaks to him, low, trying to see if he'll respond to her. "Steve," she murmurs. "It's me. We're going to get you to a hospital, okay?"

Edited 2023-05-14 02:08 (UTC)

"Gonna be fine," Steve mutters, slurring his words somewhat, but he can't seem to make his mouth work right. "Don' worry."

He blinks hard, trying to clear his vision. He can't quite focus on her face, but she has to know. "'S he still here?"

She grinds the heel of her hand into her eyes to stave off the tears that catch there and try to fall. "He's still here," she assures Steve, running her hand gently over his hair. A quick glance at Sam has him opening the bundle and taking out some of the field bandages from within.

It's not until Sam's busy staunching the bleeding wounds that she can give Steve a small, slightly shaky smile. "He's still here."

She can see his boots at the top of her gaze. So she knows it isn't a lie.

Her heart thuds in her chest, leaving her light-headed as she slowly tracks her glance up, until she's looking at him once more. This beloved face, that had been watching her with no recognition whatsoever. "Bucky's here," she promises Steve again, though her eyes are on the Winter Soldier.

And her last word is addressed to him. "Right?"

He nods once, very slowly, his gaze never leaving the two of them. "Right," he manages, and feels each word as sharp as glass in his throat, slicing him to the bone.

"Sharon's right, Steve. I'm here."

Steve catches clumsily at her hand, and she lets him hold onto her, his grip uncharacteristically weak. "Don't let him go," he mutters, and she smiles at him again, small and sad, but real.

"I'm on it, Cap," she promises. "Just rest. Let me take over with this, okay?"

Don't let him go. She doesn't have the first intention of letting Bucky disappear, not now that he's calling them by name, not now that he's looking at them with recognition. She's spent too many nights dreaming of seeing his face even one more time.

Sharon lets her hand stay in Steve's as Sam works on him, then braces herself before she looks up again. She needs to: the wave of grief and longing and agony and wariness that slams over her would wash her away, otherwise. She swallows, sets her shoulders and lifts her chin.

SHIELD might no longer exist. But she's still Agent Thirteen, and she can take it. She can take anything she has to. "You know me?"

Edited 2023-05-14 02:29 (UTC)

He swallows, and nods his head. "I do now," he says, low but clear.

She'd descended from that copter like the angel he used to tease her about being, her hair blown around her as bright as any halo.

He doesn't make any attempt to move toward her. "Sharon. I know you."

He says her name, and a million memories flood through her mind: the field in France, his room in London. Her name on his lips; whispered, laughed, sighed, moaned.

She allows herself a deep breath. "Good."

The smile that curves her lips now can hardly be called a smile at all; it's more a shadow that tucks against one corner of her mouth. "Welcome back, Sergeant."

He can't hold her gaze, not in the face of her kindness and the subtle shift to her expression. He lets his own drop, looking at where Steve's lying so still beside her while the other man works over him.

He's brought such pain to these two he'd loved so much. It would have been better if he'd died in the fall; for them, for the world, for everyone.

"You have to get him to the hospital," he whispers. "Somewhere safe. Please."

"We will." At her nod, Sam begins unfurling the sling, and she shifts to help him move Steve onto it.

Her glance keeps returning to Bucky – Bucky, Bucky – and she frowns at the way he's holding his right arm. "You need medical attention, too."

"It's not - I'll be fine." It should be worse. Would have been worse, if Steve hadn't been trying not to hurt him more than he had to, where he'd been trying to kill the man who was his best friend.

"You need to hurry."

"We're going as fast as we can," Sam tells him, sharp. Sharon helps him clip the sling around Steve, then looks up at Bucky again. "Come with us."

Sam slants a look at her, but she ignores him. "Bucky – "

She has no idea even what she wants to ask, what he can even give, but she knows she can't let him go. Not for Steve, not for herself. She shakes her head at herself. "Will you come?"

He doesn't miss the look the Black man gives her, and he can't blame him even the slightest bit. He shakes his head.

"I'll meet you there." He's careful to say nothing about when.

She can't bear to think of him vanishing once more, but he's right: they have to get Steve to the hospital, and it'll take both her and Sam to get him back up to the copter. "Promise me," she says, low and desperate.

"You've made me promises before. Steve, too. Promise me again."

All the breath sighs out of him in a rush as though he's taken a hard punch to the gut.

He doesn't want to do it, but every second they delay makes Steve worse. "I promise," he says, low but clear, then repeats it to be sure. "I promise. Both of you."

It'll have to do. She nods at him, which sends dizziness swirling through her head once more – she hasn't eaten in far too long – and finished clipping Steve into the sling.

Getting up, she unclips the line from her harness and runs it beneath the sling, then clips it to itself and clips her harness to the sling as well. "Bring us up," she tells Fury and Nat, as Sam gets on the sling.

As they rise back up through the air, her gaze never leaves Bucky, standing there below.

He watches as they disappear into the helicopter, and doesn't move until it flies off in the direction of the city and the nearest hospital - a good one, he hopes. Only then does Bucky pick up Sharon's forgotten phone and head into the underbrush, making his way across the north end of the island. Long before they'd built the Triskelion at the south end, Roosevelt Island had been a national park and preserve; due to a combination of political influence exerted by environmentalist groups and a good deal of public pressure, half of it is still. Right now, that suits his needs perfectly.

He avoids the established trails and circles around the memorial in the center of the island, moving through the trees like a ghost. It won't be long before more rescue crews start to arrive, and he's got to be gone before then. He stealthily makes his way into some bushes at the edge of the water on the west side, studying the pedestrian footbridge before he approaches it. For the most part, it's empty of people, save for a few foolish souls who are congregating on the far end, pointing at the smoke rising from the wreckage and trying to film it with their camera phones. Good enough.

It's a little hard to use his right arm still, but he hadn't lied to Sharon. He's healing already, he can tell. He unsnaps one of the ammo pouches at his belt and pulls out a tightly-wrapped fabric ring, which he slides over his left wrist and unrolls into a thin black nylon sleeve that he uses to cover his left arm. Once that's done, he steps out onto the trail and hurries out onto the bridge, darting glances over his shoulder every so often, just as though he's another one of SHIELD's escaping personnel. Nobody pays much attention to him; they're all looking at what's left of the south end of the island. Nobody notices when he moves past the bicycle racks at the end of the bridge and into the parking lot, stopping at the nearest motorcycle. It's the work of a moment to trigger the ignition; mere seconds after that, he roars off, accelerating up the George Washington Memorial Parkway and away from the ambulances and police cars that are screaming down the highway toward the devastation that he's left behind him.

He abandons the bike inside the mouth of a sewer tunnel and disappears into its darkness. It's not far to one of the emergency caches, where he can get what he needs.

She'd expected to stay at the hospital with Steve, waiting by his side until he wakes up. He'll need her, after all this, the way they'd needed each other when she first fell back into her own time two years ago.

What she hadn't expected for Sam to point the doctors at her, too, and to wind up with a saline tube in one arm while she listened to a litany of stern advice about how to recover from the head trauma she recently received. Even arguing that she could stay and rest in Steve's room wasn't good enough, but Sam finally took some pity on her. "Stay at my place," he told her, handing over his keys. "There's food in the fridge, and the guest room's comfy."

Her other option was to go back to her – Kate's – apartment, and the idea of sleeping there tugged a knot of dread into her gut, so she'd accepted.

But she still needs clothes, so she'd stopped at the apartment on the way, anyhow, and found herself wandering around it, going from room to room. The lamp is back on her bedside table, where she'd set it that morning before heading to the Triskelion, but she can hardly look at it.

SHIELD is gone. Who knows where Bucky went, or if he'll ever be back. Steve is badly injured, and she's not feeling so hot, herself. She blinks, and realizes she's been sitting on the edge of her bed, staring into space, for – she checks the bedside clock – close to half an hour.

Maybe that doctor wasn't so off about the head injury, after all.

Edited 2023-05-14 12:38 (UTC)

The city is in shock. He can't let himself feel anything about it, but it's useful for intel and for moving around undetected. The cache had everything he needs to start out, and he hits a couple of the others as well to make sure he's well supplied for going on the run.

Bucky stashes his tactical gear and the weapons that he can't immediately carry on a rooftop along with a small black knapsack that'll serve as a run-out bag, tucks a few things into his pockets, and rejoins the crowd on the streets as a civilian. He drifts with their movement, not lingering too long or hurrying too quickly, and watches the news through every public display or bar TV he can find.

It's enough. It tells him the name of the hospital that Steve's been taken to - some reporter was pretty resourceful, looks like, although they haven't been able to get to him because of security procedures. He lets himself draw a breath of relief at that. It also tells him that they don't know who he is, not yet. There's a lot of coverage of him, but most of it doesn't show his face clearly if at all; just his arm, and various acts of blood and death.

Still, he has to be cautious, and he will. When he enters the hospital, baseball cap pulled low, he's carrying flowers he'd stolen from a corner stand and he goes to a different floor entirely. He manages to lift a nurse's security badge and locks himself in an empty room to access the medical records. Sorting by recent admissions helps him find how they're listing Steve, and also tells him that Sharon had needed treatment herself.

Steve's in bad shape, he reads, jaw set and the look in his eyes grim, but he's stable and expected to make a full recovery. Sharon was treated and released, he sees, and allows himself a single shaking breath of relief.

He expects to find her at Steve's side, but what he finds is a quiet room on a guarded hallway. He steals a doctor's white coat and makes his way along the hall anyway, thinking to duck inside for a moment, only to spot Sam Wilson planted in a chair at Steve's side instead. There's no sign of Sharon, and Steve's still unconscious.

Instead of starting a fight by trying to see him, he retreats to the hospital basement and leaves as quietly as he'd come. There's one other place he knows that he can check, to start. It doesn't take long to make his way to the apartment building. He examines it carefully from a distance while he pretends to study the display in a bookstore window, and concludes that it's not under guard.

He considers going back in through her apartment window and decides against it. Instead, he climbs down from the roof to the hallway window and slips inside there, then takes a deep breath and knocks softly at her door.

She'd meant to get up, but had only drifted off again – fully conscious, simply not thinking. Observing. Feeling. So when a knock comes at her door, she startles into awareness.

Who would come here? Fury? Nat? It can't be Sam – not unless, unless something happened at the hospital. She reaches for her phone, only to remember once more, belatedly, that she doesn't have it anymore.

She'd lost one sidearm in the wreckage of the Triskelion, but there's another strapped to the bottom of her bed. Sharon reaches down for it, then silently slips through the apartment to the door. The shadow of someone standing outside is just visible in the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.

Coming right up to the door to check through the peephole would give her position away in the same way. If it's HYDRA, she should simply run. But if it's Nat, or Fury...

Sharon softly moves to the side of the door, taking care not to let her own shadow flicker along it, and presses herself to the wall, then reaches for the knob with one hand. On a silent count of three, she wrenches the door open and spins to aim her Kahr at the figure outside in the same breath.

If it's Nat or Fury, they'll forgive her. If not... well. It's time for her to get off the back foot.

The door jerks open, and he has to use ruthless self-control not to jerk back when it does. He doesn't let himself move at all, not even when the light from the hallway window glints off the barrel of her gun.

Bucky stays still and silent, hands in his jacket pockets, and meets her eyes.

He'd promised.

It's the only clear thought that makes it through the sudden ringing in her ears. He had promised. But she hadn't really expected to see him again, had she?

Sharon doesn't lower the Kahr. Her glance flickers over him, cataloguing the hands in his pockets, before she meets his gaze once more. "Going to kidnap me again?"

"No." Low, but clear. He doesn't move or flinch, even while guilt settles deeper into his bones.

She should hate him. She should. He'd think she did, if it weren't for the broken memory of something to do with music while he was hanging from a chain on the dock, the way she'd asked him to come with them - although that could have just been for Steve's sake. "I'm not."

Even now, even like this, the sound of his voice, low and guilt-ridden, trips wires in her that she thought would never activate again. Because she would never hear him again, not outside of the old PR reels that she's watched more times than she'd be willing to admit.

But emotion, right now, might get her killed. She forces back everything else, draws the agent forward like a wall. "Tell me my name."

"Sharon Carter." With an effort of will, he keeps his words as steady as before, and doesn't let himself linger on the sound of her name on the air, the feel of it on his tongue. Instead, he makes himself glance at the apartment door, then at the door of Steve's apartment before looking back at her.

"Unless you're still going by Kate Newton, here."

Her eyes narrow. "Cute."

If he'd been wiped again, someone would have had to tell him her name. She considers for a moment longer, then lowers the Kahr in a slow, smooth motion and stands aside. "You'd better come in."

Not that there are too many nosy neighbors around, tonight. She wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in the whole damn building had decided to take a few days away.

He gives the tiniest of shrugs with his left shoulder, then blinks at her in surprise. He really hadn't been sure what to expect, but ... he'd promised. More than that, he'd needed to see her, to see with his own eyes that she was okay, as much as she could be after everything.

After that second's hesitation, he moves cautiously through the door, careful not to crowd her, and steps to the side to stand against the wall.

Sharon closes the door but doesn't lock it. In the event that she needs to make a quick getaway, she'll need all the openings she can get.

She doesn't let herself think about how much faster he is than her. Or how he must have been holding back, before... before. If he'd ever been in a pitched fight with Steve back during the war, they couldn't have missed how much faster and stronger he was than he should have been. Could they?

But when the door closes, it feels like the apartment shrinks around her. Her glance flickers to the place where he'd slammed her against the floor and held her down in a horrible subversion of a lover's embrace, then lifts back to him. Her chest lifts and falls with rapid, shallow breaths.

After all this time. After all the times she'd wanted to see him again. After all the dreams and memories and tears and grief –

She has no idea what to say. The only thing she can think of, the only thing that surfaces, clear, from the slosh of words and recriminations and pleas that wash around her chest, is the one thing she knows is a priority for them both. "Steve will be okay."

Her voice is quiet in the still apartment air. "Sam's with him at the hospital."

"I know. I went there first." It's just as quiet, and his glance is thoughtful as it rests on her.

Her breathing is shallow and too fast, and it hits him with the impact of a grenade. She's scared. She's scared of him, and she has every right to be.

Moving with deliberate care so as not to startle or alarm her further, he retreats all the way across her living room, giving her as much space as is possible within the confines of the apartment, and stops against a wall there. He's out of sight from the windows, but could be through one quickly if he needs to go.

Maybe he should. "Saw they treated you as well. How badly did I hurt you, Sharon?"

He moves away from her, as far as he can go while still being in the same room, and her body can't decide whether to be relieved or unhappy about it. "It's not all you."

The deep slice on her arm had required stitches, and it's not the only trophy of her fight earlier. "I tangled with Rumlow, too."

He nods, very slowly. "He's dangerous. Likes pain. Hates Steve."

Bucky studies her carefully, searching for any and all signs of injury and making note of everything he sees. There, damage to the corner of her mouth; there, a chafe mark from the harness strap; a bandage on her forearm, and those are just what he can easily see.

Bitter self-loathing threatens to swallow him, and in that moment he wishes again that he'd died years ago.

"Not so dangerous anymore. One of the helicarriers fell on the Triskelion."

Smashing. Destruction. Clouds of dust and bursts of explosions. "He wasn't quick enough."

He looks her over, and she wonders what he sees. The last time they'd seen each other, she'd been in uniform, and so had he; she'd sent him off, bare-headed and brave, with a wink and a smile and foolish optimism. Sharon swallows, hard, against the lump in her throat. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm operational," he reports, automatically. "I'll be fine. After all, Steve wasn't trying to kill anyone."

It hangs there in the air between them.

Operational. She thinks of the chair in the underground bunker and feels sick. "Bucky – "

It jerks out of her, reflexive, and she can't quite keep the anguish and guilt locked behind the agent, not when his name is on her lips. Not when she owes him this. "Bucky, I'm sorry."

Shock spears through him, and he stares at her in dismay and utter disbelief.

"You're sorry? You have nothing, nothing to apologize for. Not to me. Not ever."

"I have everything to apologize for." She's holding herself so tensely that she's started trembling a little, unconsciously. "If I'd told you sooner – if I'd told Steve – "

Old, bitter guilt seeps in, poisonous. "Or if we could have made you remember, at the boatyard – " She swallows, hard. "Or come for you, under the bank, sooner."

Or if she'd pushed to look for him, to dig up the cold case of how Bucky Barnes went missing in action, worked it through. Could they have found him? Could she? "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"No, you don't," he snaps, harsher than he means. She'd known a lot of things back then, things she couldn't tell any of them, but -- "You didn't know this."

Or had she? Sudden nausea twists his insides as the thought occurs, and his shoulders slam against the wall as he takes an involuntary step backward. He stares at her in horror.

"How did you know about the bank?"

No. No, it's not possible. Couldn't be possible. She wouldn't have, couldn't have - she didn't know who he was when he came for her, she didn't.

Edited 2023-05-14 15:20 (UTC)

He moves – away, but all she registers at first is the movement at all, and she shies back like a wild animal, her hand tightening on the grip of her Kahr before she realizes he's backing away from her.

"Sitwell," she answers, trying to slow her racing heart. "He spilled his guts, the coward."

He's watching her with horrified confusion, and she lifts her free hand, carefully, holding it up, palm towards him and fingers spread in the universal slow down gesture. "No. I didn't know this. But if I could have stopped you from falling, none of this would have happened."

Sitwell. He'd been there during the most recent reprogramming, he thinks, when Command had given the order to wipe him and start over due to his instability. Sitwell would have known, and it's clear from Sharon's words that they'd tried to come for him when they found out.

He shakes his head once, back and forth, keeping his eyes on her.

"You tried. To stop it. It's not your fault we, we couldn't. It's not Steve's fault either." He draws a ragged breath. "You both thought I was dead. Should have been dead. Shouldn't have survived. You couldn't have known. None of this is your fault. Nothing. Don't apologize to me."

"Bucky – "

All of it – the last two years, the last two days – it's all crashing against her like waves breaking on a dyke.

It's Bucky. Bucky. Here, and alive, and standing there looking at her. Different, but still him. Her breath catches like a sob in her throat. "I missed you so much."

He doesn't know what he was expecting, if anything. His mind is a swirling mass of chaos, his memory restored but not whole, bits and pieces of a shattered reflection that cuts him with its sharp edges.

Like now. "I'm sorry," he whispers, low and desperate. "I'm sorry. Sharon. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, either."

She breathes, very evenly, then slowly sets her Kahr down on the coffee table. Without it, she feels bare and vulnerable.

It used to be so easy to be vulnerable with him.

Sharon takes one careful, wary step towards him, then another. When she's a few feet away, she holds out her hands, palms up. When she speaks, her voice breaks, just a little. "But I missed you."

He shakes his head, denying it, but stays silent. It won't do them any good to argue, and he's not even sure he can, not with this.

She sets aside her weapon, and he stares at her, surprised, before his eyes widen in true shock as she steps forward, as she tells him she missed him, as her voice cracks.

He almost can't make himself move. Not even to meet her halfway. But he can't leave her standing there like this, either.

His shoulder twinges as he pulls his right hand from his pocket. He ignores it, and reaches out to her, palm downward, making it entirely her choice.

He offers his right hand, and she only hesitates for a second before she curls her fingers around his.

– his fingers gripping her arm, clenched in her hair, pulling her head back, hitting her, hurting her –

She shakes her head and holds on, stubborn, despite the wave of dizziness, the way her stomach churns. "You're alive," she whispers.

He nods, and curls his fingers gently around hers in turn, letting her hold on to him as she chooses.

His left hand stays in his pocket, the metal of his left arm hidden by the light jacket he's wearing. He'd almost rather cut that arm off again than touch her with it.

Her breath is coming a little too fast; she consciously takes a deep, slow one.

"Aren't you happy to see me?"

He tries to speak and can only make a low, strangled sound. Happy is a word almost entirely without meaning for him. Flickers of memory from so long ago and distant that they seem to have belonged to another person entirely flash behind his eyes. That man would know what happy means, he's almost certain, and would be able to feel it.

Not him; not the Winter Soldier. Weapons don't have wants, needs, or emotions, and he doesn't know what to do with everything welling up in him now.

"I nearly killed you," he falls back on, a barely audible whisper.

"That's not quite true."

Her own voice is a low murmur. She closes her eyes and fights back the flashes of memory that come, unbidden, before looking at him again. "You were very careful to not kill me."

She needs to understand. What it does to him is irrelevant. He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see her face as he speaks.

"You were a high-value associate of the target that intel indicated he'd do anything to save. Keeping you alive but at risk was the fastest way to bring him out of hiding before the deadline."

"I know." He's keeping his eyes closed. His lashes smudge against his cheeks in just the way she remembers. "I was bait. Good bait."

Lucky me, she'd told Nat. Despite everything, she had been. Very lucky. If he'd killed her and then remembered... if he'd killed Steve...

But he hadn't. "It made sense."

"I wasn't expecting the man with wings. He wasn't in the files."

He opens his eyes again, having discovered he can't keep them closed; the internal yammering about threat assessment and situational awareness is too loud. He stares down at the floor instead.

"Neither was I," she admits. "I hadn't heard of him before. Steve must have only just met him."

He'd have told her about Sam otherwise, she thinks. He knows she wants to know whenever he's made a friend. She squeezes his hand, trying to get his attention. "But the result was the same. You didn't almost kill me."

His glance flicks up at that, uncertain and wary as he searches her face before he shakes his head again and goes back to staring stubbornly at the floor.

He looks back up at her, then away, and she feels like she's about to shatter into a million pieces. "I don't know what to do."

She wants to throw herself into his arms, to hug him and hold him. She wants to back the hell away from him and keep her gun between them. She wants to go back, all those years ago, and tell him the truth the first moment she arrived.

She wants some damn Advil; her head is killing her. "I thought I'd never see you again."

Maybe it would have been better if she never had, he thinks. For her; for everyone.

“What do you want?” It’s a mere whisper, barely audible.

Her fingers tighten on his, a moment of desperation, before she forces herself to let go.

"Does it matter?"

This time, his nod is immediate and certain. He might not be able to give it to her, whatever it is, but it matters.

"Yes."

She shakes her head at him, unconvinced. All this is bigger than her, now. It always has been.

But it's Bucky, and Bucky's asked her what she wants so many times that she doesn't know how not to answer him. "I want to be happy to see you," she says, low. "I want you to look at me and call me 'angel.' I want for you to stop putting yourself as far away from me as I can get. I want Steve to be better, and I want the three of us to hold onto each other and never let go again."

She shakes her head again, minutely, and looks at him. "Can you give me any of that, Bucky?"

Every word cuts him to the bone, sharper than any blade. Slowly, his gaze lifts from the floor to lock with hers, bleak and nearly black with an intensity to it that's drowning deep.

"But you aren't." A shudder runs through him as he hears his own voice, as the truth of his words strikes home. "Happy, I mean. If I move, you flinch. Steve's in the hospital because of me; I put him there."

He draws a ragged breath, but doesn't look away. "The man who called you angel, who made you laugh and smile, the man who... " He trails off there as something splinters in his throat and swallows, hard. "I don't know who that man is, any more. I haven't for years. I can't give him back to you. I don't know how."

He takes another breath. "I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."

He's not wrong. She isn't happy to see him, exactly. Certainly not the way she always imagined she'd be, if the impossible happened. "It isn't that you shouldn't have come," she tells him, quiet but firm. "It's that you're asking the wrong question."

What she wants has been irrelevant from the beginning. She wanted him to live, she wanted to stay with him, she wanted everything he ever promised her.

She wants for him to still love her, the way she still loves him. But there's nothing either of them can do about any of that, it seems. "What I want, instead of what I need."

He searches her face as if he could find answers to all their questions written there, somehow.

"Then what do you need?"

You.

But even if he looks and sounds and walks like the man she loved and lost, it's slowly becoming clear to her that whatever HYDRA did to him has left him broken.

Which means her mission parameters have changed. Which means she has a new goal. "I need for you to stay," she says, very slowly. "And let me help you, the way you helped me once."

Every breath hurts, the way it had for weeks when she first arrived home. He's right in front of her, but all she can feel is the grief of knowing he died all over again. "I need to be able to tell Steve we have you back, when he wakes up."

Her throat works. "And I need to make HYDRA pay. For all of it."

He can't stay. Not to mention the fact that he's going to be named one of the world's most wanted terrorists any moment if he hasn't been already, every second that passes makes it more obvious that his very presence the way he is now is tearing her apart. He can only imagine what it'll do to Steve, a Steve who remembers a man named Bucky and not the Winter Soldier, a Steve who would have died before hurting him, even to protect himself.

He pushes himself off the wall with determination and takes a single step forward, toward her.

Her throat works, but she holds herself still with an effort, determined not to flinch away from him again, even as her stomach clenches.

She won't. She can control it. She won't be afraid of him.

He sees her swallow, sees the way she's carrying herself, and knows, he knows that she's fighting every self-preservation instinct to not react.

Pride at her courage and sorrow for her pain threaten to tear apart what's left of his heart. Slowly, gently, he raises his right hand to cup her cheek, and strokes his thumb feather-light over the delicate arch of bone.

"It's okay, angel," he whispers. "You don't have to protect me any more. It's my turn now. Tell Steve I'll be in touch."

In the next instant he's moving, dashing for the window across the room.

Her heart stops as he reaches up and touches her face, and her eyes almost close at the way his thumb tracks, light as a feather, over her cheek.

Angel, he says, and so the sob is already rising in her chest when he rips himself away from her and flees to the window and he's fast, he's so fast, he's so much faster than her even on her best day and this is far from that. "Bucky, NO – "

The words shred her throat as she cries out, throwing herself after him even though she knows, she knows it's too late. She has to watch him go out the window and disappear, again, and there's no flash of blue light this time but it still feels as though she's been dragged and unceremoniously dumped here and now all over again.

There isn't a single sign of him anywhere outside the window, not even when she leans perilously far out of it, her eyes blurring with tears and her voice choking in her chest. "Come back."

It's too plaintive and too quiet for anyone but her to hear it, and there isn't anyone around anyway. So at least there also isn't anyone around to see her slump to the floor with her back against the wall and her face in her hands as her heart breaks all over again.

Edited 2023-05-14 22:50 (UTC)

He hears her call after him as he dives out the window, and the agony in her voice is almost enough to wrench him back around.

Almost. He's doing the right thing - the right thing for her - and that gives him the strength he needs to keep going.

He vanishes along the same path he'd used to get out of sight of Steve right after shooting the Director, and eels up to a nearby rooftop to wait. She shouldn't be alone. It's not safe. He'll keep watch.

Someone has to.

* * * * *

From what Sam had said, it's about an hour, maybe an hour and a half since Sharon had been discharged from the hospital, but when Nat swings by his house to check in, she's not there.

Stifling her concern for the moment, Nat backtracks to Sharon's apartment. They really have to get her a new phone, she decides, as she climbs the stairs and knocks on her door.

She doesn't know how long she sits there and sobs, broken down past even what she can take. There's no Steve here to hold her and make sure she drinks water, and no Bucky to wipe away her tears and make her laugh, a thought that only makes her cry harder, until all that's left is her thudding headache and sore eyes and a chest that feels like something's been digging in it with dull claws.

This time, when a knock sounds on her door, she staggers upright and almost runs over to yank it open, hoping –

But it isn't him. It's Nat, looking clean and put-together despite the chaos of the day and night, and Sharon wipes furtively at her eyes, holds the door open. "Hey."

Oh. That explains it, then.

"Hey," Nat says, as she steps into the apartment. She waits for Sharon to shut the door behind her, then pulls her friend into a fiercely comforting embrace.

She hiccups a laugh and puts her arms around Nat in return, even as she says: "Ow. I'm still bruised, you know."

Not that she lets go. She doesn't want to.

"I know. I'll try not to break anything." She doesn't loosen her hold even a little for several seconds, though, and when she pulls back to search Sharon's face she gives her as comforting a smile as she can.

"Come on. Curl up on the couch. I'll put some coffee on, unless you'd rather something stronger."

"I have to get to Sam's."

It's the only goal she's got. She needs to keep moving forward. Sharon wipes at her eyes again and takes a deep breath. "Or maybe I'd take you up on that something stronger."

Scotch had helped, when she'd been in the first throes of her despair, with Steve down in Virginia. Does she even have any, here?

"If you'd rather, we can go over there first. He's not planning on leaving the hospital tonight," Nat tells her.

She hopes she doesn't have to point out that she doesn't have any intention of leaving Sharon alone right now.

Her first instinct is to dig in her heels. She glances at the open window, and forces herself to let go of the thought that he might come back. If he were going to, he would have while she sobbed. "Coffee first," she says, tearing her glance away from the window and looking at Nat.

"Let's not have to try and figure out Sam's coffeemaker in the middle of the night."

"Coffee it is." She doesn't miss the way Sharon's gaze tracks to the window and back, and files that away for later. "Curl up, get comfy. I'll be right back."

Sharon might feel better with a second or two to compose herself further, after all.

Getting comfy seems unlikely, especially while she's still in this apartment, but she nods and goes to settle on the couch. From the position she takes, she can keep an eye on the window... while staying well within reach of the Kahr that's still on the coffee table.

She sets the coffeemaker to brewing and fills two glasses of water while it works. Nat carries them both back and hands one to Sharon without comment.

Well, without much comment, anyway. "Did they give you anything at the hospital that you're supposed to be taking around now?" Or at all. She bets it'll be 'at all,' if Sharon's trying to stay as alert as she suspects.

"Um – " She forces her thoughts back to the hospital, to the saline drip and the kind but busy doctors. "Nothing much. They said rest and water. Ice packs. The usual."

And look at that: she has a glass of water in her hand. Sharon blinks at it for a second, then lifts it for a deep swallow before she remembers something else and lowers it once more. "How're you feeling?" she asks, concerned. "Those Bites of yours pack a punch."

Nat grimaces. "They really do. Better than the alternative, though." She lifts her own glass and takes a sip to demonstrate that her hands have stopped shaking.

Sharon reaches out with her free hand to catch Nat's, curling her fingers around her friend's. "I'm really glad you're okay," she murmurs. "You did amazing, Rome."

"Same goes. Both parts," she says, just as softly, and squeezes Sharon's hand, and doesn't let go. "But are you okay?"

She reaches out, and Nat reaches back. She squeezes her fingers, and Nat squeezes back.

They're such simple touches, but they're almost enough to break down again. Her throat closes at the touch of her friend's hand, at her gentle question. She can't quite say the words, so she only shakes her head instead, and lifts the hand holding her glass so she can wipe at her eyes once more with her wrist.

"Kind of thought not. Hang on a second, okay?" she murmurs. Nat sets her glass down and gives Sharon's hand another quick squeeze before vanishing into the kitchen. The sound of water running in the sink echoes clearly, and then she's back, carrying a clean, dry dishtowel and one that's nice and warm due to having been wrung out under hot water.

She offers both as she sits back down beside her friend, and there's understanding in her glance.

She accepts the towels with a wry half smile, then carefully dabs at her face with the damp, warm towel. It feels good against her sore eyes, her sore mouth. She lingers with it until it's cool in her hands, grateful for the chance to hide her face, even if only for a little while.

Once it's gone cold, she sets the damp towel aside and gently blots her face dry with the other. When she lifts her glance back up to Nat, her eyes are still sore and red, but her face is a little less flushed, and the streaks of her tears are gone.

Nat smiles at her and takes the damp towel back to the kitchen. She comes back with two mugs of coffee, one light and sweet and one with milk only, and passes Sharon hers before she sits down again.

"So," she says, gently. "Want to talk about it?"

Sharon sighs, long and sore. "I don't even know how to start talking about it, Nat."

She wraps her hands around the coffee mug, but doesn't lift it for a sip. "Most of it's classified to hell and back... or was," she realizes. "I guess at least some of it, at least, is out there now, along with everything else."

Nat winces. "Should I apologize?"

"Not even a little," Sharon tells her, firm. "You had to do it."

And Steve was right. SHIELD couldn't exist, any longer. Not after everything. So maybe it's a moot point.

She takes a deep breath and meets Nat's gaze. "I know you were working at the time. But did you know I was... gone... when everything happened in New York?"

She frowns, cupping the mug absently between her two hands as she draws up one knee and turns to sit sideways on the couch, facing Sharon.

"I knew you were working with Selvik and the Pegasus team," she says. "I thought you were involved in the aftermath and cleanup out there."

"No. I mean, I had been with Pegasus. But I wasn't there then." She leans to put down her coffee mug and gets up. "Hang on a second."

In her room, she carefully doesn't look at the ceramic lamp as she digs out her laptop. Carrying the computer back to the living room, she curls up once more on the end of the couch and flips open her screen, navigating with the ease of long practice through her firewalls and passcodes until she reaches her secured files, speaking as she works. "The damn cube lit up while I was standing next to it. It opened a portal and pulled me through."

For a moment, she stops, her eyes on the picture she'd pulled up. It's an effort to pull her glance away, but she manages it, even if she doesn't turn her laptop for Nat to see yet. "To France, 1944."

She knows her expression goes blank when she's thinking this rapidly, trying to sort out her thoughts and reactions both, but to be fair it's not every day that you find out your friend has traveled in time.

"I really hate that cube," she murmurs, after a second, and makes herself take a swallow of coffee. "That must have been quite a surprise for everyone."

"You and me both," she says, with feeling. "And it was. Stark – Howard Stark – tried to figure it all out... we don't need to get into that right now," she interrupts herself.

She looks down at the photo she's pulled up again, and her broken heart aches a little more. "I met them all," she murmurs. "Steve. Stark. Aunt Peggy. And... Bucky."

Sharon breathes deep, then turns her laptop to show Nat the photo she'd taken that day on the hillside with Bucky, when they were trying to steal a few desperate moments before Howard's experiment. In the photo, a breeze has tugged at her hair in its curls, and Bucky's handsome and bright and delighted next to her, the amazement at her magic camera clear and warm in his eyes. His arm is around her and she's curled into him, her own expression complex but her smile sweet.

Nat stares. One hand goes to her mouth as she takes in every nuance of the photo.

It's been a long, long time since she's seen James that happy.

"Oh," she breathes, and looks up to meet her friend's eyes. "Oh, Sharon. I thought it was Steve. I thought you knew about James because of him."

"In a way, I did."

She turns the laptop back around, but finds herself reluctant to shut the screen and close the photo. Sharon settles for putting the computer on the coffee table, and turns back to Nat with a deep breath. "I grew up watching those old reels, listening to Aunt Peggy's stories. Even if I hadn't gone back in time, I think I would have recognized his voice."

Her head is still aching. She reaches up to rub at it. When she speaks, she fights for ruthless control over her voice, trying to keep it from shaking. "Stark – Howard – he was worried about timelines. What would happen if one collapsed. He told me not to say anything about the future. And I couldn't anyway, I couldn't – "

It's been two years, but right now the pain is as raw and immediate as if she'd just come back, only just now seen Steve's face as he told her Bucky had fallen. Her voice grows thick. "I knew he was, was lost. I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them any of it. The plane, the ice – "

Edited 2023-05-15 01:39 (UTC)

"It's not your fault," she says, immediate and certain. Nat reaches to take Sharon's hand in hers again and holds on. "Don't think that."

"I can't know that for sure." Her voice shakes, but she keeps it as clear as she can, even as she grips Nat's hand hard.

Her smile crooks, wry. "And, anyway, I couldn't keep it up. When I heard them talking about the mission to capture Zola, I knew which one they meant. I knew it was – "

Her throat closes up, and she swallows again, hard. "So I told him. Bucky. I told him what happened. And he went anyway. Because otherwise Steve wouldn't have had someone at his back."

"Then you do know," Nat points out. "Because you tried. And... and he went. And... well."

She's doing the math in her head. "So... six months? About? I would have noticed if you'd been gone on mission that long."

"Half a year there," she murmurs. "About a week here. I got dumped at the last place the cube was used: in New York."

She leans her shoulder against the back of the couch, rueful. "Tony Stark was on me about five seconds later. He had some kind of alarm rigged up to let him know about portal activity, I guess. He brought me to the Avengers tower. Steve was there."

"I've just learned time travel is real and I already hate it," she grouses. "Or maybe I can add that to the cube's account as well. Okay."

She tips her head to the side, studying Sharon's face. "So Steve was there. And realized you'd come back?"

"I was still wearing the uniform," she murmurs. "There wasn't a lot of warning before it snatched me. He knew right away, as soon as he saw me."

She nods, slow. "And so the two of you had common ground. A lot of it." She can't help herself, and glances over at the computer again.

"A lot of it," she agrees, quiet. Those first few days with Steve, the later ones at the mountain house, they're all burned into her memory. She breathes out, long and shaky, through her nose. "We needed each other after that. 'You watch my back and I'll watch yours.' That's what we said."

She smiles a little on hearing this. "Well, you're both good at that."

Her glance rests on the picture for a moment longer before she looks back at Sharon. She's pretty sure she doesn't need to ask, but she also thinks it might help her friend if she does. "It was serious between the two of you, wasn't it."

It's not really a question.

She nods, and her own gaze flickers to the photo once more. "I was writing to his sisters, by the end," she murmurs. "He asked me to come back with him to Brooklyn."

(""So you see, I have to come back.")

The old familiar ache spikes her chest, and she turns her glance back on Nat, her eyes dark and sad even as she finds a small smile. "I'm really glad he knew you, later. And he wasn't totally alone."

"You might not want to thank me for that," she murmurs, as an old complex knot of guilt and grief and love and fear and pain twists her up inside.

"I'm not sure it did him any good, in the end."

"I'm not sure knowing me did, either."

Did she only make things worse? Did she, in some horrible way, cause his fall to begin with? Sharon shakes the thoughts away and squeezes Nat's hand. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I don't believe that," she says, firmly. She looks at the photo again as she says. "You two look happy. And... and in your case, I doubt he was punished for it."

She doesn't know if she wants to talk about this or not, but Sharon deserves to know, especially now, with everything.

"I mentioned he was one of my trainers, right? In the program."

"You did." And based on Nat's reactions, the way she'd paled when they talked about him, she suspects it ended up being more than that.

Her smile is rueful. "He always was a good teacher."

"He was," she agrees. "But at the time I was so furious at - well, at a lot of things. And nothing ever seemed to bother him, or even affect him, and it made me mad. So I set out to get a reaction from him. Not by trying to hurt him or anything like that; I could tell pretty fast that wouldn't do anyone any good, including me. More like being... unexpected. Better than expected. Surprising." She draws a soft breath and looks up at her friend.

"And somewhere along the way, it turned into wanting to see him smile. And then one day... he did."

She can imagine it clearly enough, even without knowing all the details of the Red Room. Nat has been stingy with them in the past, for good reason.

Sharon squeezes her friend's hand and smiles back at her. "I get it. He's got a good smile."

"Yes. He does. Did. I don't think he smiles any more, Sharon," she says, as gently as possible. "I don't know if he can."

"Anyway, that was the beginning of it, for us. I still don't know exactly how long we had together, given everything." Stolen moments and secrets that added up to something far more, something impossibly precious and just as impossible to keep.

"But in the end we were compromised." She keeps her voice steady by an effort of will, even as she feels her body tighten and her fingers grow cold. "It was bad."

"Maybe not right now," she says, grimly determined. "But I defy even him not to smile at Steve Rogers, one day."

Now that he has his memories back. Or some of them, anyway. She has no idea how much or how little he remembers, but it's a start. It has to be.

But for the moment, her focus is on the woman in front of her. As Nat tenses, Sharon leans in to give her a warm hug before she pulls back again. "How bad?"

She's distantly surprised that Sharon hasn't pulled away from her on hearing that they'd loved the same man, in their own ways, at different times. She can't keep herself from hugging her friend back, grateful that she's in her life.

"Bad," she says again. "There's a reason I knew what my Bites... what electricity would do to his arm. When they found us together that last time, it was clear they'd already known. They came prepared."

A faint shiver runs over her skin. "They dragged me out of the room in front of him while they piled people on him. Bodies to hold him down. Hit him over and over again with taser rods, with anything they could to stop him, so that he couldn't - couldn't fight - he tried, but--"

She grips Sharon's hand, tight. "Even after they shut the door, I could hear him screaming. It... it was the last time they let him out of cryostasis between missions, I heard."

Each word feels like a punch to her gut, but she grips Nat's hand and holds on tight. "It's not your fault," she manages, finally.

Every horrible thing that happened to him, it happened because there were evil men using him for their own ends. She grasps Nat's hand and gives her friend a determined look. "They did that to him. Not you. I'm... I'm glad you had each other."

"I know." Most days, she even does. Most days. "But now..." She shakes her head. "Just... don't get your hopes up too high, Sharon. You know?"

"Who, me?" Sharon digs deep and finds a smile from somewhere, one that says I have a hand full of aces when she's actually holding nothing at all. "I always keep my hopes manageable."

Nat gives her a skeptical look. "You remember who you're talking to, right?"

"Yeah." Her smile's sweet, even though it hurts her mouth. "One of the best friends I've got."

She takes a breath and gives Nat's hand a little shake. "And he's going to need us both to help him now."

She squeezes Sharon's fingers and lets herself take a slow sip of coffee before she answers.

"I'm not saying no," she murmurs, finally. "I'm not. But if he doesn't want to be found, he won't be. You need to be ready for that. I looked for him until I had to stop. I had to make myself stop."

"You were on your own," Sharon says, firm. "And he was still in their grip. Things are different now, Nat."

She glances over at the photo, then at her friend, something complex and rueful shading through her eyes. "Do you mind? What I told you?"

She's not as sure as Sharon is that things are different, but surely she can allow them both a little hope.

But at her friend's question her eyes narrow, and she gives her hand a little shake. "Don't be silly. Of course I don't mind." Nat hesitates, then, and searches Sharon's face. "Do you?"

Her glance drifts back to the photo, and she doesn't answer at first. "I took that photo the day Howard tried to send me home," she murmurs. "It didn't work, but... every minute I was there, we both knew I had to try to get back to my own time. I knew if he lived, he'd have a whole life without me."

She takes a breath and looks back at Nat, her smile sad but fond. "Like I said. I'm glad he had you. I can't think of anyone better."

She leans in and hugs Sharon, holding on for a few long seconds before she pulls back again.

"So," she says, deliberately bright. "We're going to have to figure out how to keep Steve from running off after him, you realize."

"I think I can help with that," Sharon murmurs. "For a little while, anyway."

Her glance flickers to the window, then back again to Nat. "He told me to tell Steve he'd be in touch."

Her eyes narrow as she sees the way Sharon looks at the window. "He was here again? Tonight?"

Sharon nods at her. "For a little while. Yes."

"Idiot man," she mutters. There's complex fondness underlying her tone, but real annoyance, too. "You realize he's probably still out there, right?"

"If he is, then I reserve the right to be mad at him for letting me cry all on my own," she mutters, before she lets go of Nat's hand and gets up to peer out the window.

"Oh, you definitely have that right," Nat says, coming to join her. "Pretend you're looking down at the street," she says, tilting her head a little to the side as she does the same. "Point out something down there to me."

She does as Nat requests, nudging her friend's shoulder and pointing down to something just around the corner of the other building.

"See anything?"

"Give me a-- got him," she says, breathing it out without moving her lips. Natasha makes them curve up in a brilliant smile and says, casual but clear enough to carry, "You're right, Steve loves that bike. It's a good thing he likes to keep it over there."

Metal glints from above as someone shifts, trying to follow the angle indicated. "He's on your own roof," Nat breathes.

Grief and longing and exasperation all war with each other in her chest. "Idiot," she mutters.

"Guess he's keeping an eye out for any lingering HYDRA goons."

"Probably," she agrees. "Which isn't a bad idea, that much I'll admit."

She turns away from the window as casually as she'd approached it, not wanting to put his wind up, and makes sure Sharon's the only one who can see her lips. "Do you want to go after him?"

More than anything, she wants to say yes, but she thinks of the way he'd dropped his gaze, how gently he'd touched her cheek. I'll be in touch.

"Yes," she murmurs. "But I don't think we should. He's not ready for it."

Her smile quirks, wry. "It's nice just to know he's there."

There's quiet understanding in her eyes as she nods. "And this way you can also tell Steve you saw him, that he's okay."

As okay as he's likely to be, given everything.

"Come on. Let's pack up and get you to Sam's so you can get some rest."

"Yeah. Good idea."

She still has to tear herself away from the window, but she manages it, leading Nat into the bedroom. Sharon digs out a tote bag and starts shoving clothes into it, then carefully lifts the ceramic lamp and wraps it in a shirt, adding it to the pile.

She starts going through Sharon's closet for shoes and jackets and things to supplement what her friend's collecting, keeping watch on her out of the corner of her eye.

"Worried about leaving that here?"

Sharon shakes her head; it isn't that, not exactly.

"It's hard to sleep without it."

James had bought it in France, she remembers Sharon saying, there on the dock. Something deep in her chest aches at the thought.

"Okay," she murmurs. "What about a phone? Do you have a burner you could use until we get you a new one?"

"Yeah. Um..."

She goes into her closet and rummages around, resurfacing with a box of still-packaged burner phones. She grabs one and a charger to go with it, then tosses both on the bed.

Nat takes a moment to scan the label with her own phone, adding the number to her contacts, then packs it into Sharon's bag.

"Do you want me to stay over with you? Sam's got a nice place," she teases. "I can mix those drinks."

"If you don't have anything better to do," Sharon teases back. It doesn't quite have her usual zing, but she gives it her best.

"I heard he has food in the fridge, too."

"All I have to do is get ready for an emergency Congressional hearing sometime in the next week or so," she says, with an eyeroll. "Evidently I drew the short straw. But there's time to figure that out, so... drinks and food first."

She slings the strap of Sharon's bag over her own shoulder. "Sam can even cook. He made me and Steve breakfast the other day. So there's probably something good."

Sharon makes a face and heads out of the room with her, swiping off the light as they go.

"Want any help with that?"

"Mmm. Maybe. We'll see," Nat decides. She goes to the window and makes sure it's shut and locked, then draws the sheer curtains over it, trying to strike the balance between signaling that James won't find Sharon here if he breaks in again without indicating that he'd be unwelcome.

"Let's go. I'll drive."

She watches as Nat closes and shades the window, then nods and goes with her friend to the door.

Is he watching, as they go down the hall? Does he see as she gets into Nat's car?

Will he be in touch? She has to hope so. So she does, as hard as she can, as Nat drives them away, chatting lightly as they go.

For now... goodnight, darling, she thinks, up to the empty sky above.

He watches from the roof of her apartment as she leaves with Natasha--

(Natasha, Natasha, Natalia Alianovna)

--and keeps watching until the sleek black car is out of sight. Only then does he move, heading for the secure location he'd picked out.

He spends the night on top of a building in downtown D.C. He knows perfectly well that he's far more likely to be found if he tries hiding on or even under the streets below, at least for now. He's careful to pick one that has no connection to anything, no reason for him to be there. Bucky sneaks into a stairwell, breaks the security lock at the top, and jams the door shut from the outside once he's on the roof. It's a more comfortable bed than many he's had, hidden in the lee of an air-conditioning unit, under an infrared-reflective tarp that'll prevent his body heat from being detected just in case anyone's scanning on a fly-by. Probably not, but there's no harm in being careful.

He lies awake for hours, counting the bright stars overhead and ignoring the clamor of his thoughts as best he can.

Edited 2023-05-15 18:52 (UTC)

Only Sam's warning gets them to the hospital in time to see Steve before he checks out. Unsurprisingly, he's not thrilled about still being there, but Sharon takes advantage of his unwillingness to cause trouble for the nurses and shoos Sam and Nat out the door to get them all coffee. "Hey."

Slipping into the room, she closes the door behind herself and gives him a sweet smile, then comes around to the chair where Sam had spent the night. "How're you feeling?"

"A little sore, but okay." Steve eyes her, a little warily, hoping she's not going to take the doctors' side. "I don't need to stay here another night."

"Don't worry, Cap," she says, fond and amused as she comes to sit by his side. "I'm here to help bust you out. Just as soon as all the paperwork is done."

Relieved, Steve grins at her. It doesn't even hurt his face to do it, except maybe for a little stretch under the skin over where he'd learned the bones had taken some damage. "Glad to hear it."

He sobers fast, though, and searches her expression. "How are you? Sam brought me up to speed on the fight, and... and other things."

Like the fact that Bucky had refused to come with them, even when Sharon had asked, and then hadn't shown up at the hospital like he'd said he would.

"I'm okay."

She's doing a lot better, seeing how much he's healed, but that should surprise no one and least of all him. "Steve... Bucky came by to talk to me, last night."

"Good. I'm glad."

As she continues, hope lights a fire in him that burns bright as anything he's ever imagined. "He did? At your apartment? Is he there now?"

His face lights up, and his hope goes stabbing through her own chest like a sword. "No, he... he didn't stay."

She swallows and finds a small smile for him. "He said he came here, first. Did Sam see him?"

"Oh." It's hard not to feel crestfallen, but he tries to remind himself that at least Bucky's around. "No, I don't think so. He would have told me, I'm sure."

Her heart breaks all over again at Steve's disappointment. On impulse, she reaches for his hand and curls her fingers around his, the way she's done so many times in the last few years. "He asked me to tell you that he'd be in touch."

Whatever that means. She's guessing it won't be a phone call or another visit; not for a while.

"That's something, anyway." Her hand feels small and delicate in his, like always, but he's gotten used to how to manage his own strength over time. Steve presses his thumb to her fingers in a gentle squeeze.

"Maybe he was just worried about the security." The guards outside would probably take a dim view of anyone unauthorized trying to get in.

She thinks it's more likely that Bucky hadn't felt like he could go in there and see Steve, but she nods. "Maybe."

Sharon presses her lips together, rueful, and watches him with dark eyes. "I'm sorry, Steve. I tried to get him to stay."

"I know you did." He puts sincere certainty and warmth into his words. "I have absolutely no doubt of that. He's probably just trying to figure stuff out--"

Which would make sense, given everything.

"--and figures he has to do it on his own."

Which is ridiculous, but Steve's certain that Bucky's just stubborn enough to try. He searches her face. "How, um... how did your talk go?"

"Not great."

("I don't know who that man is, any more... I can't give him back to you.")

Her throat aches, but at least – thanks to Nat and some sleep, with the stars from his lamp floating overhead – she doesn't tear up. "He blames himself for everything, Steve, I... I couldn't get him to believe anything else."

Steve sighs, long and slow, before his jaw sets in determined lines. "We'll just have to keep trying. I'd guess he's feeling pretty bad about hurting you."

There's a rueful expression in his clear blue eyes as he looks up at her. "I wasn't exactly tracking on all cylinders there on the beach, but he seemed pretty upset."

"Me. You." She runs her thumb over his knuckles, grateful once again for Steve's steadfast determination.

"We'll keep trying, I promise. I'm not giving up on him. We're going to get him back, Steve, I swear."

"You're darn right. We're not losing him again." Not after they've just found him.

He shifts a little in the bed, getting ready to get up so they can get started, and the twinges that ripple through him when he moves remind him. "How was his shoulder?"

"It still hurt, I think."

She sighs, a small, sore sound. "I don't know. He stayed as far away from me as he could, mostly."

Edited 2023-05-15 22:51 (UTC)

"Hey." Steve leaves off standing and leans forward instead to take both her hands between his. "He wouldn't have come if he hadn't wanted to see you."

She takes a deep breath and shakes her head, slowly, meeting his eyes. "I don't know," she repeats, soft.

Her voice is a bare whisper. "He barely remembers the man he used to be. Or how he, he used to feel."

"But he does remember," Steve insists. "Now, anyway."

Used to feel, she says, and he realizes something else. He hadn't thought - it's been two years, and Bucky's memory's always been part of their lives and always will, but maybe she wants something different now. He owes it to her to ask.

He tilts his head a little, searching her face. Gently, he asks, "What about what you feel?"

It's not a complicated question. So why does it feel like she's suddenly about to step on a trap door?

She opens her mouth to say it doesn't matter, then shuts it again. That's the last thing Steve would accept from her. "I don't know," she says, finally, and meets his steady gaze. "He died. I mourned him. We mourned him. I would have done anything to get him back again. I still light that lamp he gave me every night and think about what it was like to look at the stars with him."

Steve knows. There were more than a few late nights where he watched those same candlelit stars with her. She swallows, her throat aching. "But I'm... scared of him. And I don't know how to make it stop."

Heart aching, he presses her hands between his as if he could give comfort through touch alone. Could Bucky tell? Is that why he'd stayed across the room from her, like she'd said?

"Then we'll figure that out too," he tells her. "You're not facing any of it alone."

She nods and looks down, away from his sympathetic glance. "I tried not to be," she murmurs. "But there – in my apartment, where he'd come for me before – "

Sharon takes a deep, shaky breath and looks up at him, solemn. "It's not that I think that he did it. He didn't choose to hurt me or, or you. But it was still his hands. His voice. You know?"

"I know." Bucky's face above him, twisted with rage and fear; Bucky's hands delivering bullets and blades and blows until he was left bleeding and broken in the wreckage of his own body and clinging to old memories.

"I understand, Sharon. I do."

"I know you do." He's a better person than she is. He won't let what the Winter Soldier did influence how he reacts to Bucky, she's sure of it.

She takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders. "We'll get him back," she promises. "We can figure out everything else later."

"We will," he agrees. "All of it." He presses her hands together one more time, then pushes himself off the side of the bed to standing.

"My shoes have to be around here somewhere." He's just grateful Sam had brought a change of clothes for him.

"Uh – " She gets up to help him look, but his shoes aren't under the bed, or behind the chair. "They must be – "

"Sam," Steve sighs. "Must be."

"Heard my name." He leads the way into the room, to-go cups of coffee in each hand, followed by Nat. Sam tells Sharon, "She has yours," before he offers a cup to Steve. "You should still be in bed 'til they come round to discharge you."

"I'm tired of waiting," Steve says, polite but firm. "Where are my shoes, Sam?"

She accepts her coffee from Nat and goes to stand by her friend while Steve and Sam talk, until she has to interject. "Look at him, Sam."

Her voice is gentle, but it has just as little give as Steve's. "It's okay. He's better."

Sam studies them both, then glances at Nat, who smiles and shrugs. "You get used to it," she says.

"Uh-huh. Good to know." He goes to the wardrobe on the far side of the room and pulls Steve's shoes out from under a spare blanket at the back of the middle shelf.

"Thanks," Steve says, taking his shoes. He borrows the chair just long enough to shove his feet into them, then stands back up. "We'll stop at the nurse's station on the way."

It's unspeakably relieving to see Steve standing and moving around with a minimum of pain. He's still a little stiff, she knows, but he's up and taking charge and that always makes the world feel a little more manageable.

She falls into step with him, then stands aside as they reach the nurse's station and the woman standing there.

"Hi," he says, polite but direct. "I'm checking out. Steve Rogers, from--" He cranes his neck to spot the room number.

"I know who you are, Captain Rogers," the nurse replies. "I'm afraid Doctor Fine needs to clear you first."

"Where is Doctor Fine?" Sharon asks, lightly. "Captain Rogers is ready to check out."

"He's finishing rounds," the nurse says, unmoved. "He'll be here as soon as he can."

"How much longer will that be?" Steve asks.

"Once he's finished rounds," the nurse says, a little more crisply. She stares Steve down exactly the way Nurse Hart used to stare down Howard Stark. "Please, go back to your room, Captain Rogers."

Sam takes a look at Steve's expression and interposes himself. As he does, he catches Nat's eye and tips his head, trying to get her to coax them away.

"Listen," he says, quietly. "Think you can cut him a break? He really does have somewhere he needs to be, after, well, you know. Everything. Maybe just page the doc?"

Nat insinuates herself between Steve and Sam, then points out something of vague interest on the opposite wall. Steve gives her a wry glance, but goes along with it, and Sharon catches her fried tossing a wink to Sam as they step aside and let him talk.

"It won't be long, no matter what," Sharon tells him, quiet. "But you're not planning on going back to the apartment, are you?"

"I hadn't actually thought about that yet," he admits. "Is there somewhere else we need to be?"

He doesn't mention Fury's name, not here, but the question is in his eyes.

"Better if you lay low for a little bit, Cap," Nat murmurs. "A lot of people are about to be asking a lot of questions."

Sharon nods, wry, and looks at him. "The mountain house," she suggests. "For a few days, maybe?"

Steve hesitates, considering, then nods. "That's probably a good idea." They can plan there as easily as anywhere else, and it's a lot less likely that they'll have the media or worse show up.

"My place, first," Sam says, coming towards them. He tips his head toward the nurse. "She's paging the doc. Shouldn't be long."

Sharon gives him a small smile. "Thanks, Sam. And thanks for the room last night."

"No problem. Y'all are always welcome," Sam tells them. Steve huffs a wry breath. "I know. But like she said, thanks."

"Captain Rogers?"

Sharon turns to see a white-coated doctor coming towards them, and steps back as the man approaches Steve. "I hear you're feeling better."

"Much," Steve confirms. "Thank you for taking such good care of me. But I'm afraid I need to get on the road."

"Glad to hear it, Captain." The doctor tips his head down the hall. "Let me just check you over, and I'll be happy to release you."

Sharon glances at Steve, eyebrows lifting minutely.

Steve gives the doctor a level look, then visibly decides it'll be faster to go along with the request.

"I'll be right back," he tells the others, and follows Fine to the room.

She hides a small smile and crosses her arms as she settles in to wait with the others, before glancing over at Sam.

"Any visitors come by last night?"

Sam shakes his head. "Looks like we were able to keep it pretty quiet that he was here."

She meets Nat's glance for a second, then smiles at Sam. "Good. Thanks for staying with him, Sam."

"Sure, no problem," he says, easily, but his gaze openly tracks that exchange of looks. "Something I need to know?"

"Not right now."

And not here, where nurses and doctors and staff and security can hear them. "I'm glad it was a quiet night."

Sam eyes her for a second before he nods. "You can fill me in at the house."

He glances down the hall, where Steve's coming back out of the room, and raises his eyebrows. "That was fast."

"Well, I heal fast," Steve tells him. He slows, but doesn't break stride, and Sharon falls in next to him, amused and relieved in equal measure.

"Time to invade Sam's place again," she comments. "Remind me to leave you grocery money."

"You really don't need to," Sam insists. "My TT would snatch me bald-headed if I took you up on that."

"My great-aunt would do worse to me if she knew I didn't," Sharon counters. "Believe me."

"I've met her," Steve puts in, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth for what feels like the first time in a while. "Sharon's right."

Sam gives them both a dubious glance, but shakes his head.

No one else gives them any trouble getting out of the hospital, although the security team accompanies them to the door and waits with them while Nat brings the car around, which is helpful more for their ability to keep back the clusters of enthusiastic reporters who are trying to get a scoop.

But they're gone, finally, the city sliding by, emergency vehicles still running down every street, trying to get to the Triskelion and the Potomac.

"Should we swing by the apartment to pick up a few things?" he asks, honestly uncertain. "Clothes and such. It's okay if not."

"Let's head to Sam's, first, unless there's anything you need," Sharon says. "We can stop by before we head out of town."

"Probably better that way," Nat puts in. "People are going to start looking for you soon, Cap. Let's not give them the advantage."

Steve sighs at that and slumps down in his seat.

Sam and Nat keep the conversation going as they head through the city, until they turn off and onto Sam's street. Any chatter stops abruptly as they approach Sam's house, and each of them stare at the motorcycle now parked at the side of the drive.

"I didn't do that," Sharon murmurs.

"That's my bike," Steve realizes, and in the next instant he's out of the car almost before Sam's brought it to a stop, running for the house, hope wild inside him.

He doesn't have a key, he realizes, barely in time, and scrambles around the side to the back so he can try to pry the glass sliding door open without damaging Sam's property.

She's not sure she thinks he's inside the house, but she follows Steve anyway, coming up on him just as he manages to get the back door open.

But the house is quiet and empty. There's no evidence that anyone aside from her and Nat has been here since yesterday.

He looks over his shoulder at Sharon as she catches up with him and gives her a rueful, pained flicker of a smile. "I thought, maybe-- never mind." Steve starts for the front door, opening it with a shake of his head for Sam, who's coming up the walk with Nat beside him.

"No one's here. Let's see why he brought it."

She sets a hand at the small of Steve's back, trying to comfort him and herself in equal measure. It hadn't been likely that Bucky would be inside, so why is she so disappointed?

Following Steve to the bike, she starts examining it, then flips open a saddlebag. There's a small wrapped parcel inside that she takes out and uncovers, only to find her phone, the one Bucky had stolen.

"This guy's really starting to get on my nerves," Sam mutters under his breath, as they watch Steve and Sharon search the bike. "Why's he jerking them around like this?"

Nat loops her arm through his and leans against him for a moment. "You're a good man," she says, lightly. "If it helps, I doubt he's trying to do that. He's a little confused right now."

Her gaze sharpens as Sharon unwraps her phone. "Isn't that the one you had before?"

"Yes." She turns the phone on, and her expression shifts, something complicated shading across it. "Looks like he made us a video."

"Inside," Nat says, briskly. She keeps her tone casual, but she's scanning the area around them, taking in every possible sight line.

It's not that she thinks James wants to hurt them. But ... it's probably better for Sharon and Steve to be able to watch that in relative privacy.

"Come on, let's go."

It's more effort than she'd like to not just hit play, but Nat's right.

Still, it's a second before she lowers her phone and looks at the others. "We should see if there's anything else on the bike."

Edited 2023-05-16 18:52 (UTC)

Steve tears his gaze away from the phone in her hand. "Right." He goes back to searching the bike, coming up with nothing else other than a piece of scrap paper with a sketched picture of a key inside a square.

He frowns at it for a second or two before realization strikes. Steve turns around in a slow circle, searching the ground near the bike, near the sidewalk, near Sam's front door -- there. He walks over and picks up the brick that's resting on the grass, nestled against the side of the house, and retrieves his bike's keys from beneath it. Steve looks down at them as those he's never seen them before, an aching pang of mixed hope and sorrow slicing through him.

Steve's face falls, and she comes to join him, her phone in her hand and her expression wry. "Come on," she coaxes, gently.

"Let's see what he has to say for himself."

"It's where we used to hide the spare key," he murmurs. "For the apartment. First for the one where I lived with my mother, and then later, ours." Steve looks up at her. "Under a chunk of brick near the door, just like that."

"I guess he's remembering some things, at least. Come on."

She slips an arm around him and coaxes him towards the house, where Sam and Nat are waiting.

Sam opens the door and leads the way in. He waves a hand at the living room, but doesn't go that way. Instead, he tilts his head toward the kitchen. "Why don't I put some coffee on. Or tea, if you want that instead."

It's an offer for them to be able to watch that video alone, if they want, and he's pretty sure Steve'll recognize it.

"In a minute, maybe," Sharon tells him.

Although, who knows? They might want something stronger. But Sam's involved in all of this, and he deserves to know what's going on. Whatever message Bucky left for them, he and Nat can hear it, too.

"Okay then." It's their call. Sam's not gonna argue, especially as he'd kind of like to hear what the guy's got to say for himself. "In that case, come on over here."

He leads the way into the living room and goes to the television, where he uncoils a long cable that's plugged into the back of it from a hook nearby. As he holds it out to Sharon, it's obvious that the adapter's clearly designed to let a phone project its contents to the television. "I use it to watch my nephews' videos and pictures and things when they send them," he explains. "All the family down in Louisiana."

She accepts the cord and plugs it into her phone, then waits for him to turn on the TV and make sure the volume is good. Looking down at the video, her thumb hovers for a moment over the frozen still before she taps the screen and allows the recording to play back.

The video clip opens with a close-up view of Bucky's face, his brow creased slightly in concentration before he sits back, evidently having stabilized the phone on whatever he's using to hold it. It's quiet, wherever he's filmed this, with no background noise other than a faint, distant trickle of running water. The image is a little dim, but there's enough ambient light of some kind that it's easy to see him clearly, as well as the brick and mortar of the wall he leans back against as he stares into the camera. The look in his eyes is bleak, but there's no sign of the emptiness his gaze had held before - only weary resignation.

"Hi." He sounds as tired as he looks, his voice low but still clear. "I figure I'm talking to both Steve and Sharon right now, not sure who else, if anyone. It's morning when I'm filming this, the day after." He frowns for a second, considering, and clarifies. "The day after Insight. After you stopped Insight, I mean. You and Natasha and I guess his name's Sam? And whoever else you had helping you. We all know it sure as hell wasn't me."

He takes a long, shuddering breath. "By now I figure you know more about the Winter Soldier than you did before. Or if you don't, you will soon. The short version is that I've been HYDRA's puppet for the last seventy years. Their weapon. Whatever you've heard, it's probably all true. I'm a criminal, a terrorist, an assassin and a murderer. And that's why, even though you both asked me to - I'm not coming back. I'm sorry."

At her side, Steve makes an abortive motion forward, as if he could reach through the video and bodily haul Bucky out to them. Sharon's hand goes to his arm, her knuckles as white as her face as she watches and listens.

Sorry. He's sorry. If this is what he'd planned to do, why come see her the night before? Why leave this recording? He has to know it will only make them more determined to find him. She makes an idle note of the sound of running water – it doesn't really matter if they found where he recorded this, because he'll be long gone – and grips Steve's arm a little tighter.

He waits for a couple of seconds, studying the camera almost as if he's listening to something, then lets out a soft breath. "I don't remember everything," he says, after a moment. "Not yet, anyway. It's like looking in a broken mirror. It's all in pieces, like me. But I remember enough to be pretty sure that you're both not okay with what I just said. I'm sorry about that, too. But it's the right thing to do. There are reasons. More than just one. And anyway, I'm not - I don't w--"

He chokes on air for a second, coughing violently, before he shakes his head and takes another deep, ragged breath. "You got me out of hell. I was in hell, and you got me out. It's enough. More than enough. I'm okay - I'll be okay now. I'll send you a postcard or something from time to time, so you'll know. Don't worry about me. Please."

The corners of his mouth quirk in the faintest of smiles, there and then gone. "Take care of yourselves. And each other."

He leans forward again, reaching out with a gloved hand, and the screen goes black.

The screen goes black, and she feels the now-familiar clench of her stomach, the flood of pain and disappointment. She's holding too tightly to Steve's arm, but she's not sure either of them can even feel it. "You're right, Nat."

She doesn't look away from the blank screen, her voice carefully, so carefully controlled. "He's an idiot."

"Mm-hm," he hears Nat say. He's pretty sure he was staring at the screen hard enough to leave Bucky's image printed on the backs of his eyes, or maybe that's just how it feels. Steve takes a careful breath and covers Sharon's hand on his arm with his own as Nat continues, "I'd guess he thinks he's going to be too much trouble for you, for some reason. And he's trying to protect you both from that."

"I let him make that call once before, and it cost him everything." Her voice is a bare murmur, and she can't quite look at Steve, even with his hand over hers, even knowing he doesn't blame her.

"It's not happening again."

He lifts her hand from his arm so that he can wrap it around her shoulders instead. "He doesn't get to decide for us," he says, instead of agreeing to anything that might sound like Sharon's fault.

"And I'll tell him that to his face. Once we find him."

She leans into him, her own arm going around his back in a motion that's as familiar to her now as pushing back her own hair or tying her shoes. "Once we find him," she agrees.

"Okay," Sam says. "Question is, how're we going to do that? Anyone have any idea where to start looking?"

Steve opens his mouth, but nothing comes out at first. He doesn't have the first clue, not really. Would Bucky go back to Brooklyn? Would he try to get as far away from them as he can? His glance falls on Nat, who's looking thoughtful. "Do you have any ideas?" he asks. "You said you'd worked with him."

Sharon looks over at her friend, too, but Nat shakes her head. "I did," she tells them. "I might be able to get you some intel. Might." She glances at them both in turn. "And I don't know how much it could help."

"Anything would be a start," Sharon murmurs. It's only been a few hours, but he could be on his way anywhere, by now.

"I'd appreciate it," he tells Nat, as earnest as he can make it. She nods. "I'll reach out to my contact and let you know what they say. In the meantime..." She makes a face. "I'd expect Fury or Hill will be calling any minute with an update on yesterday's fallout."

The thought of dealing with Fury's 'next steps' exhausts her more than anything else. SHIELD has fallen. What else matters?

"Maybe I'll pretend I still don't have my phone."

"Sounds like a smart idea to me." Sam tips his head back toward the kitchen. "Come on, y'all. Imma make that coffee and dig out something to snack on, and we can figure out what comes next."

"Good idea."

She nudges Steve with her arm and a small smile. "Coffee sounds great. You have any cinnamon?"

"Believe it," Sam promises, and Steve finds a smile of his own. He turns Sharon toward the kitchen and starts that way.

"Okay. Coffee, food, and next steps. Sounds good to me."

* * * * * *

He leaves Steve's bike and Sharon's phone for them to find and drifts back into the city. Most of his equipment is cached on a few different rooftops, which is fine for now. He doesn't know what he's going to do next, but there's no sense in running blind until he figures out where he's going to run to. Wearing a baseball cap to partially obscure his face, he wanders along the edge of the Mall, moving back and forth among some of the tourist groups as though he belongs there. It's while he's drifting past one particular tour guide that he discovers that there's an exhibit on Captain America at the National Air and Space Museum.

He lets himself be drawn into the crowd as he approaches the museum. It's easy to do; there are a lot of people headed that way. He uses that fact to blend with the swirls of motion among different groups and continues to follow the crowd, past the signs with Steve's face on them, into the first of the exhibit halls. Most of what he sees brings back scattered flickers of memory, not much more, until he rounds a corner and sees his own face looking back at him.

Slowly, very slowly, he approaches the brightly-lit display and begins to read.

Several minutes later, he's drifting with the crowd once more, struggling with the chaos in his mind. He spots a side room that's advertising a documentary of some sort and ducks inside, hoping to find a moment's balance under cover of darkness, only to freeze in his tracks at the sound of Peggy Carter's voice.

Her address had been in Sharon's phone, he remembers.

It's probably not a good idea, but he can't bring himself to care. It's the work of only a few minutes to make his way back out of the museum and onto a bus that'll take him where he needs to go.

The townhouse door opens at his knock, and Anna looks out with interest and a little suspicion. After the message she'd received from Sharon and Captain Rogers – and what had happened yesterday – she thinks it's reasonable.

"Yes?"

"Hi." He digs deep and finds a smile, at least a small one. "I'm a friend of Sharon's? I guess you know she's been busy these last few days, and I told her I'd swing by and see how her aunt was doing."

"Oh!" Anna smiles at him and opens the door a little wider. "Isn't that sweet of you? Come in, come in."

She waits for him to enter, then closes the door behind him. "She's doing well, all things considered. I did as Miss Carter asked and made sure she didn't see the news. And we're far enough out that things were mostly quiet. Who shall I say is calling?"

"I'm glad to hear it, and I know Sharon will be too." He can't use any of the established cover names that has an ID that he might actually need, because he's certain if he does they'll be tracking it about two minutes after Peggy tells her niece he came to visit, and it's sure as hell he can't give his real name, so he makes a snap decision.

"Jim Wilson," he says, stealing Sam's name for his last and surprising himself with the first. He doesn't know where that comes from when he says it, and it's only after a second or two goes by that he gets a dim flicker of memory. Becky. Becky had done that, trying out different nicknames for him, teasing him with each one. It's with an effort of will that he manages to keep his thoughts from showing. "She probably won't have heard of me, though."

Not by that name, anyway.

"Very good."

She bustles over to the parlor door and opens it after tapping her knuckles on the frame. "Miss Peggy? You have a visitor, a Mister Jim Wilson?"

Anna opens the door and indicates he should go in. "She's a little clearer today," she whispers. "But you let me know if she's getting foggy. I'll just run and put the kettle on."

"Thanks," he murmurs, trying not to react to what she's just confided. A little clearer? Getting foggy?

He nods to her and ducks into the room, keeping his cap pulled low for the moment while he hovers by the door, giving her time to react.

She's seated on the couch, neatly dressed in skirt and a light jumper, looking out the window. At the sound of the door opening and her guest entering, she turns to look, frowning very slightly. Jim Wilson? It doesn't sound familiar, but then it wouldn't be the first time her mind betrayed her.

He comes in, a tall young man wearing a baseball cap – inside, what cheek – and hovering near the door. Peggy feels a bite of impatience. "Well?" she asks, crisply. "Will you come closer, or do you intend to make me squint at you the whole time you're here?"

The woman sitting on the sofa is much older than the one he remembers and who he'd just seen on the movie screen, white-haired and fragile-looking, but the snap of her voice reaches right down to his core and yanks him straight upright as if ordered to attention before he can even think about it.

Bucky makes sure the door is shut, then takes a couple of steps forward, and tips his head back so she can see his face. "Hello, Agent Carter," he says, quietly. "It's been a while."

That voice... "Oh – "

She breathes in sharply, her frown vanishing as her eyes widen, before she peers much, much more closely at him. "No, it... "

Drat it all to hell, she'd thought – hadn't Steve said – but it's just possible she isn't remembering things clearly. And yet, how could it be anything else, when he still looks so young?

For a moment, her frown returns, as her glance tracks over his shoulder, looking for someone else. "It couldn't possibly be."

He glances over his shoulder but doesn't see anyone. Bucky takes another step closer and pulls the cap off of his head. "It's me," he says again. "Sergeant Barnes. Bucky. I know it doesn't make sense. But I - I didn't die."

"I know who you are." The words are a little sharp, even as they're just slightly uncertain.

What had Steve said? And had he and Sharon really been here together? She looks again over the Sergeant's shoulder, and is again surprised not to see Steve there, or her niece.

She fixes her gaze on Sergeant Barnes, an impossible man saying impossible things, and frowns at him, then lifts a hand and crooks her finger imperiously. "Come here, Sergeant."

"Yes, ma'am." He crosses the room the rest of the way without hesitation and goes down on one knee in front of her so that she doesn't have to look up at him.

She leans forward to study him. Her hands are older now, frail, but there's warmth still in the palm she cups to his cheek. He, like Steve, looks the same age as he had been, but there are differences, too.

The hair, for one. And Bucky Barnes had always had laughter in his eyes and a smile on his lips, the charming rogue. A troubled look crosses over her face like a shadow, before she frowns again. "Then... it did change? The future?"

He holds still under her touch. "No. I'm sorry," he says, quietly. "I fell, like Sharon warned me. But I didn't die. Zola's experiments, after Azzano - they changed me."

"No one knew," he adds, after a quick, soft breath. "It wasn't anyone's fault. I don't - I don't blame anyone. That's not why I'm here."

Her frown deepens, and she lifts her free hand to her temple, trying to sort through her muddled memories. The older ones are clearer, and she can quite easily recall the day they left for that mission.

The day he was lost, and Sharon pulled away. "Well." She catches his chin gently in her grip. "Steve and Sharon must be over the moon. Where are they?"

I made sure she didn't see the news, the housekeeper had said. As Miss Carter asked. The way she frowns and concentrates is deeply, deeply familiar to him from when he's trying to find something in his own mind.

(but I knew him)

Bucky finds a smile, just a little one, and holds still as she catches his chin. "They had a couple of things they needed to take care of first," he says. "I came on ahead. I hope that's okay."

She searches his eyes, uncertain. "You're always together, you three," she murmurs, and glances up once more, looking for her darling niece, for Steve.

They aren't there, and she's starting to feel as though something's wrong. The echo of her own furious voice sounds, muted, in her memory. "Everytime I turned around, there you were, right next to her."

"That made you pretty mad, too," he says. "A couple of times, at least, from what I remember."

He's beginning to think it was a mistake to come; he doesn't want to do anything that'll harm her in any way, and it's clear now that she won't be able to answer any of the other questions he had without him shattering her world the way he'd shattered everyone else's.

"Want me to go away and wait for them to catch up?"

"Hmm." Her fingers tighten on his chin and she narrows her eyes at him. "You had better be treating my niece like the lady she is," she warns. "I'll not stand for you breaking her heart again, Sergeant."

Being presumed dead is no excuse.

She shakes her head at him and lets go of his chin. "Don't be ridiculous. It's been years. I'm not about to turn you out on the street."

He winces at that, and something bleak flickers in his eyes; he can't help it. "She deserves every good thing," he says, simply, and covers any other reaction as best he can by getting up from his knees and moving to an armchair nearby.

"So, um, how have you been, these last years?" he asks.

Her sharp gaze arrows in on him at that flicker of expression, those words. Once he gets up and moves to the chair, he's too far out of reach for her to grab his ear, more's the pity, but she isn't yet so infirm that she could allow that cowardly attempt at a conversation shift to stand. "And what is that supposed to mean?" she demands.

Yes, certainly she agrees. Her darling niece deserves only the best; but she clearly recalls Sharon putting down her foot about that including the man now in front of her. "I did give her your letter, you know."

It takes him a second before he realizes what she's talking about. The memory of a night spent writing, desperately aware of time running out, slams into him. "Thank you," he says, quietly. "I'm sorry you had to, but thank you for taking care of that for me."

He takes a deep breath and makes himself meet her eyes. "I'm not well," he says, blunt and direct. "I've been... lost... for a long, long time. I have to figure a few things out. She's not happy about that, and I don't blame her."

"I know all about not being well, Sergeant," Peggy tells him, crisply, before she relents. "And I can tell you my niece has been instrumental in helping me through this... blasted infirmity. Steve – Captain Rogers – also, of course."

She lifts her eyebrows at him. "So you could hardly be in better hands."

"I know. There's no one better than they are." Quiet, but with a certainty that goes all the way to the bone.

He does know it. Now, anyway. Bucky studies Peggy's expression carefully.

"Are they - they've been doing okay, right? Happy?"

"I don't suppose you think they'd put anything but their best face on when speaking with me, these days."

She remembers – or thinks she remembers, at any rate – Sharon's grief, her darling girl's head in her lap and her own hand gentle on that golden hair. "They're happier to have you back, I imagine."

She looks expectantly at the door, then back at him. "Where are they? I know how you three like to stick together."

What flashes in his treacherous mind is the last time the three of them had been in the same place, there on the dock with him dangling from a crane and Steve and Sharon trying desperately to remind him who he was. He ducks his head for a second to hide his expression.

“They had to take care of a couple of things first,” he repeats. “I came on ahead.”

She glances up as the door opens and Anna comes in, bearing a tea tray with a pot, cups, and a small tray of biscuits. "Here you are," she says, comfortably, and sets the tray down before pouring Peggy her tea.

"Thank you, Anna," Peggy tells her, then sips at her tea and sets it down once again as her nurse leaves and closes the door behind her. Turning back to her companion, she opens her mouth to invite them to take some tea, then takes a sharp breath in, her hand going to her heart. "...Sergeant Barnes?"

He blinks at her in confusion before realization strikes, and understanding dawns in his eyes.

“It’s me, Agent Carter,” Bucky says, as gently as he can. “You’re not imagining things.”

"Oh, my."

Tears come more easily to her these days, and they sparkle in her eyes now, as she thinks how happy Steve must be, how happy Sharon must be. "It's so good to see you."

“It’s really good to see you too,” he assures her, and he suspects he’s never meant anything more, even as his heart aches at the sight of the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

"Yes, well." She dashes at her eyes with a hand and clears her throat. "I suppose a little lack of punctuality can be forgiven."

She studies him: his long hair, the lines on his face. He looks as though he's been through hell, and her own expression softens. "It broke their hearts to lose you, you know," she murmurs. "Both of them."

Past and present blend unexpectedly into one immutable truth as flashes of recollection stutter across his broken mind. "I tried to stay."

The desperation in Sharon's eyes - the way she'd stood in the apartment, clutching her weapon - staring at him in horror, afraid of him - pleading with him not to go on the mission, not to go not to leave her not to go not to--

He swallows, hard, and hears Steve's scream ringing in his head.

("Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

"BUCKY!"

"Bucky?")

He looks down at his hands, one gloved, one not. "I tried," he whispers. "I can't. Couldn't. I'm sorry."

"Can't?" Peggy says, her eyes narrowing.

There is much to despite about her mind's difficulty in grasping when she it, but it is made her a good deal more sensitive to the tenses her visitors use. "What do you mean, 'can't'?"

He hadn't meant to say that, hadn't meant to - he shouldn't have come. He should leave, before he makes things any worse.

Bucky eases forward in the chair, preparing to stand, and looks up at her. "I'm not - I'm still trying to find my way home," he says, softly. "I haven't made it yet."

He shifts, getting ready to move, and she puts the whipcrack of an order into her voice. "Stay put, Sergeant."

She frowns as she studies him, trying desperately to put the shattered pieces of what she knows or can guess together. "Are you in some sort of trouble?"

He freezes, utterly immobile, her command snapping through every part of him with a power she couldn't have anticipated.

(ready to comply)

His wary glance meets hers.

"A little. I'm... it's okay. I'm sorting things out."

"Don't prevaricate, Sergeant," she says, curt. "It wastes everyone's time. And goodness knows I haven't enough of that left."

Peggy reaches for her tea, tapping a finger on the delicate china and hoping this moment of clarity will last. "Are you safe?"

She really hasn't changed, not down at the core of her, he thinks. From what he can recall, anyway.

"I am now." Simple and to the point. "Some people are looking for me, but I'm ... good at avoiding that kind of thing."

"Hmph."

She frowns at him over her teacup. "It sounds to me as though you could use a place where you might be able to have a moment to find your footing."

He gives a very small shrug, and doesn't argue. She's not wrong.

"Don't worry about me, Agent Carter." He's not worth her time. "I'm pretty persistent."

"That, I hope, was never in question," she sniffs. "Tell me, when has telling someone not to worry ever worked?"

"It wasn't," he says, mildly, then gives another small shrug.

"I had to try. I didn't come here to worry you. Or anyone."

"Then what did you come for?"

She looks at the door, then back at him, suspicion creeping in. "Do Steve and Sharon know you're here?"

It's an excellent question, and one he doesn't have an answer for. Impulse, longing, doing things for himself alone - none of these are things he's been allowed for so long he's not exactly sure of the last time.

(Natasha. He thinks that might be it, all those years ago, until - until what had happened. His plea to be allowed to remember Steve certainly hadn't been permitted.)

"I thought you wouldn't mind," is what he says, right before he freezes again, cursing himself in all the languages he knows.

"... no. They don't. They know I'm... back," he settles on. "But not that I was coming here. I lied to your - your assistant. I'm sorry."

He certainly looks sorry, and more than a little hangdog. Peggy sighs.

Better address one thing at a time. "Well, since you're here, I suppose we'd better decide what we can do about the trouble you're in," she says, briskly. "And we'd better do it quickly, before my mind springs a trap on me."

"I just need time," he decides. He suspects she's not going to take a simple 'no' for an answer, and frantically searches for a reason. "Somewhere ... quiet. To, to - sort through things."

There's something in the darkness of his gaze as he looks at her, something like understanding. "I had a - a head injury. It's kind of a mess inside my head right now. That's all. I'm working on it."

It's not all, not even close to all, but it's all he's willing to admit.

"Well, my resources are somewhat lacking, at the moment," she has to admit. "But time and a quiet place are both within my means to give you."

Harrison and Amanda, bless them, are unlikely to stumble on him, certainly. "My nephew and his wife have a house in the mountains of the Shenandoah River Valley. It's quite secluded."

He stares at her, unable to come up with words at first. Any words at all.

An image of a mansion flickers across his thoughts and is lost, he doesn't know why. It's not like he's ever seen the house she's talking about.

"Are you sure?"

"Kindly pay me the respect of believing me the first time I tell you something, Sergeant," she says, crisp, and reaches toward a nearby desk, looking for her address book.

"Yes, I'm quite certain."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, a little abashed.

He shouldn't accept. It's not - it wouldn't be an intrusion, not if he's actually invited, unbelievable though that may be, but he can't think that Sharon would want him in her family's home, not after what he did to her. But maybe it wouldn't hurt just to - to see it. Just once. For a day or two, while he figures out where to go and what to do next.

They're not expecting him to come see Peggy. She might not even remember his visit, with her mind betraying her so cruelly in the way he's seen. (Maybe that'd be better, for her.) There's no reason they'd think to ask, or her to tell them. He should have the time. Just a little time.

"Thank you," he murmurs, very low.

She finds the book and flips through the pages with a fragile hand. Finding the correct address, she leans forward and offers it to him. "There's a gate code, there, beneath the address," she tells him.

"It isn't much, Sergeant. But I hope it helps."

He takes the book from her with care, holding it in his gloved left hand, and studies it for a second before he pulls out his phone and takes a picture of the page.

Bucky hands it back and looks up at her. "I'm sure it will. It's kind of you to offer. Thank you."

He hesitates, struggling with the chains and restrictions in his mind, then speaks again, carefully feeling his way with each word. "You asked why I came. It wasn't for - I wasn't looking for, for help. I... I was glad to, to know you were, were here. And thought it would be okay to - to see you. Again."

She listens to him, doing her best to pay attention to each careful word. "Sergeant," she says, once he's finished.

It's difficult to put what she's feeling into words: seeing him again, realizing that even though he's alive, he's still not found. "I'm... I'm very glad you came. I hope you'll visit again, soon."

"I'll try," he says, softly. "Soon."

Bucky gets to his feet and looks down at her for a moment. "It was ... it's good to see you, Agent Carter."

"And you, Sergeant."

She holds out her hands to him.

He blinks once but takes her hands, gently curling his fingers around hers.

There's still some strength left in her fragile hands, and now she uses it to tug him down to her, low enough for her to kiss his cheek.

And to whisper in his ear. "You young scamp. Try not to put us through all that misery again, won't you?"

A startled breath huffs out of him, carrying with it something that might be a ghost of laughter's distant memory.

"I'll try. I promise."

He squeezes her hands, careful to not exert too much pressure, and straightens, looking down at her. He doesn't smile, but there's something quiet and even fond about the look in his eyes, just for a moment.

"Take care, Agent Carter. I'll come see you again."

Someday. Maybe. If he can.

"You had better."

She lets go of his hand and gives him an imperious glance. "Now, go on. I haven't any desire for you to watch my mind wander again, and I suppose it'll happen sooner rather than later."

"Yes, ma'am." Bucky pulls his cap back onto his head and goes to the door, moving with the unthinking quiet stalk that's become second nature to him over the years. He pauses there and looks back at her over his shoulder, then nods farewell and slips out into the hall.

She waits until she hears the front door close, and a few moments after that before she reaches once more for her tea.

"Anna," she calls. "Bring me my phone, please."

He leaves the house and heads up the sidewalk, careful to move in a way that won't draw attention or make him look like anything other than someone who belongs in the area, even while his mind whirls.

There's a metro stop not far away. He can take it to long-term parking and obtain a vehicle there, then swap before he gets too near the house. He can take a couple of days, maybe three, to figure out what he's going to do next.

It's not safe; nowhere is. But it's as safe as he's likely to find for a while.

Only a direct order from Aunt Peggy could have kept them from heading to the mountain house as quickly as possible. They manage to restrain themselves for thirty-six hours, and that's as much as they're willing to give.

(It's actually quite a bit harder to get out of the city than they'd anticipated, but they'd have managed it, she's sure.)

Steve grows more and more tense the closer they get to the house, and she can't blame him... but she's also not certain that relief is the right word for what she feels when they get inside and see evidence of usage: a pan, plate, and silverware, cleaned and set to the side of the sink; a coffee mug. She listens, but hears no sound from up the stairs.

If he's inside, he's hiding.

He'd ditched the first stolen car, then the second, between D.C. and New York, laying the trail in that direction just on the off chance Steve might think he'd head back to Brooklyn. After that, he picks up an old but serviceable motorcycle at a used car lot, paying cash, and heads to the Virginia mountains.

It's his second full day there, and it feels like a dream. He'd think it was one, except all his actual dreams are nightmares. He'd wandered through the house like a ghost, looking at all the pictures in the giant downstairs living areas and exploring the various wings - multiple wings, what the hell - as carefully as he could in order not to disturb anything. He'd retreated from the more formal wing quickly, feeling a little better about sticking to the kitchen, the room beyond with its couches and fireplace and armchairs and windows, and the bedroom he'd picked almost at random at the end of the hallway. It had seemed like a mostly unused guest room, as far as he could tell, and he figures he won't hurt anything by being there.

(It had been easy to figure out which room was Sharon's. He'd left everything untouched and undisturbed, but he'd allowed himself to walk through it, studying the signs of childhood memories that were left visible, and had spent a solid five minutes staring at his own framed photo on the bedside table before he left, closing the door behind him.)

The woods are peaceful, undisturbed by any signs of people. He traces his way through them until he finds a small river, and follows dim flickers of memory to a cave without letting himself think too much about it. He's retreated to the clearing by the water again this afternoon, this time bringing a cheap composition book and a pen with him. Maybe writing things down will help him get his thoughts in some kind of order.

She sends Steve to look outside, figuring that if Bucky catches sight of him and runs, Steve's a lot more likely to catch him than she is. And, besides, Steve won't know if anything in the house is different from how she'd left it.

A few things are. Here and there, she finds small evidences of someone being here: a towel in the bathroom, a quilt in the guest room that wasn't folded back quite the same way.

(She can't resist leaning down to breathe in the scent of the pillow, even though it only makes her heartache worse.)

He seems to have taken over the guest room, so she sets to searching, looking for anything he might have brought with him.

(Under the bed, tucked up and strapped nearly flat between two of the slats: a small black backpack which contains a single change of clothes, a French passport in the name Marcel Durand, a British passport in the name Richard Evans, and a thin leather wallet with two credit cards each for each identity.)

Bucky stares down at the half-filled page, which has almost nothing of actual plans and instead contains random thoughts and memories as they came to him, and heaves a deep sigh. He closes it, snaps the pen inside and bends it in half to shove in his back pocket as he starts back to the house.

He's almost there when he catches a flash of light and drops instantly into a crouch behind a bushy evergreen, peering toward the house. He'd spotted the reflection off of a windshield, he realizes; someone else has arrived, but it's not a car he recognizes.

A second flash, this time off of blond hair as a figure emerges from behind the house. Bucky stares at Steve, who's looking around the yard, and doesn't move.

She sorts carefully through the bag she finds, taking pictures of the IDs and cards, then puts everything back the way she'd found it. It's a long shot, but they might be able to trace the card numbers, get an alert when he uses them.

There's nothing else in the room that she can find, so goes back downstairs and heads into the other wing of the house, searching for any sign of him.

Peggy must have told him, he realizes, watching as Steve searches the area. He's careful to keep his head tilted a little, using the bill of his cap to hide his face. Whether she did it deliberately or not doesn't change what he's facing now. Did Steve come alone?

Bucky glances at the house, then across the driveway toward the trees on the other side, where he'd hidden his bike. He could run for it. There's nothing in the house that he can't live without, but maybe Steve'll think he's already gone. He'll hold position here and wait to see what happens.

There isn't any other sign of him. He hasn't made a fire, seemingly, or played a record; only eaten and slept and gone... who knows where. Out into the woods where she and Steve had walked in those first days after she'd come back, she supposes.

Sharon comes to the front door and walks across the porch to lean on the railing and look over to Steve. "Any luck?"

Not alone, he sees. For an instant, he considers the idea that maybe they're just trying to get out of the city for a bit and this is just an unlucky coincidence, only for that flicker of not-really-hope to be dashed when he hears Sharon's question.

"Not yet." Steve's voice carries clearly back, the worry and strain in it clear. Guilt weighs heavy. "Do you think he's gone?"

"I think he'd put away the dishes before he goes, unless he's forgotten all his manners, too."

A joke is the only way she knows how to deal with this... all of this. Bucky, only a few steps ahead of them. Maybe almost close enough to touch. She looks out at the silent, welcoming woods and sighs. "I don't know, Steve. I hope not. Space to figure himself out is one thing... disappearing completely is something else."

"If I could just talk to him." Frustration paints Steve's words, but he thinks there's something else there, too. Something almost desperate, tinged with a stubbornness that's suddenly, shockingly familiar. "I could get him to understand, I know I could."

He probably could, Bucky thinks. But the thing is, it's Steve who doesn't understand. Neither of them do, although he suspects Sharon may be closer to it. With a slow, sinking feeling, he realizes there may not be another way for them to understand, other than to let them see for themselves.

But is it safe?

Edited 2023-05-17 21:31 (UTC)

"Yeah," she sighs. "But maybe it's a good sign he's even in the area, you know?"

He's had days, now. He could have left the country at any time, but instead they find evidence of him here, at her family's home. Instead, he visited Aunt Peggy. "I haven't seen any car tire tracks, have you?"

"No, but--" Steve shades his eyes with his hand and looks at the driveway with fierce concentration, looking for signs. "Maybe he ran out to get groceries or something."

They're not going to stop trying to find him, Bucky realizes. Not for a while, anyway. Not until they have a reason. Does he have the right to cause them that pain just to protect himself?

No. He doesn't.

Cautiously, he eases back from the tree until he can rise unseen. Bucky takes a slow, deep breath, and steps out from cover into view.

There's a shift at the tree line, and her glance snaps up. In the next second, her breath catches. "Steve," she murmurs.

She doesn't take her eyes off him. She can't. He might vanish again.

Sharon sees him first. He holds position, not allowing himself to move even the slightest bit, even as Steve whirls to face the direction Sharon's looking and spots him.

The expression on Steve's face is hope and heartbreak at once. He'll see it in his nightmares, he's sure.

He doesn't say anything. What is there to say?

"Bucky."

Just his name threatens to cut her throat and break her heart as it rips out of her. Sharon grips the railing with bloodless fingers, trying not to move, as if he's a wild animal they might scare away.

She casts about desperately for something, anything. Words that can act as a liferope, that he can use to come back to them. "What do you think about the house?"

"It's nice."

His glance flicks back and forth between them, watchful. "Peggy said I could be here. I didn't break in this time."

"It's okay," Sharon says, quickly. "It's okay. She invited you, that's fine. You can be here."

He can stay here for as long as he wants or needs, easily. "I know you didn't break in."

He knows better than to ask her what she wants, now; if maybe instead she'd prefer for him to not be here, in the place that means so much to her.

She'd wanted to share this with the man in the framed photo. Not the one who'd kidnapped and hurt her.

His glance flicks to Steve and holds, weighing him. "Any lingering injuries?"

"No." Steve's still staring at him, still poised and tense to take off after him if he runs. He swallows, then nods to Bucky's right shoulder. "You?"

"I'm operational." He says it as a matter of fact, because it is. "I heal quickly."

She can see it hit Steve like a bullet: operational. Bucky, who had been so full of life and charm and personality; now it's like someone had wrung all of that out of him, left him an empty husk of himself.

But he can't be empty. She won't believe it. "Come inside."

She says it too quickly, too plaintively, and visibly pulls back on herself. "Please."

Steve flinches, and Bucky feels the ache of the blow he'd delivered in his chest, in his gut, as if he'd just punched himself with his own left fist.

He hadn't even meant it. He'd just been telling the truth.

Sharon's plea hits his ears, and he turns his level regard back on her. "Are you sure?"

Peggy'd twist his ear for not doing her the courtesy of assuming she was, but he has to ask. He can't let her do things for him out of obligation. He won't.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'll... make some coffee."

Or something. Anything. Whatever it takes to get him to come inside, to let them see him, to be close to him. Her knuckles are white from how tightly she grips the railing. "Come in. Please."

She's hanging on to the railing as though it might vanish if she doesn't, or as if she might. It's the other night in her apartment all over again, only worse, and he hates himself all over again.

He also knows he's going to accept. It's the only way to get through this; the only way to make them see, to help them understand.

Bucky nods and starts forward. He takes care to keep his pace slow and deliberate, so as to make certain it won't be confused for an attack. Only it seems Steve wasn't thinking like that at all, for as soon as he gets close, Steve crosses the remaining space between them in an instant and wraps him in a tight hug, his body shaking.

Edited 2023-05-17 22:56 (UTC)

Once again – like always – Steve does the thing that no one else can do, and before she knows it, she's vaulting lightly over the railing and running, gravel scattering under her shoes, barreling into both of them to put her arms around both.

There's just enough left of her sanity to hope he doesn't see this as an attack, but she's not trying to pull him and Steve isn't trying to grapple him. She has one arm around him and one around Steve and she presses her head to someone's shoulder, shuddering as her fingers grip into the cloth of someone's shirt.

Steve shifts a little to the side, drawing Sharon in as she crashes into them. Bucky's afraid to move at first, but slowly raises his left arm upward to pat his best friend's shoulder. He curves his right arm around Sharon's waist, holding on, letting himself be held by both of them.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, each word choked, broken, and barely audible. "I'm sorry. Sorry."

It's all he can manage to say.

His arm goes around her and she almost sobs at the feeling, how familiar it is, how strange. Steve's arms are around them both, and she's gripping into both their shirts like she'll never let go.

Bucky's voice is a bare whisper, hardly anything at all, but she presses her face into his shoulder, shaking her head, and listens as hard as she can. It's his voice, his voice, not the Winter Soldier ordering her not to scream. She can feel Steve's shaking breath through the arm she has around his back. "We've got you, Buck," he murmurs. "It's gonna be okay."

It's not, he's certain. How can it be? But just for a second, for a second, he lets himself believe it.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "It would have been easier for you both if I'd just run. I couldn't. I'm sorry."

For a second, she laughs, though it comes out almost as a sob. "Baby, neither of us has ever cared about easier."

He knows that. He'll remember it. He'll learn it all over again. "We care about you."

Steve presses his own head to Bucky's, his breath coming hard. They're both being careful not to crush her, she thinks, a little wildly. Which is nice of them.

A violent shudder runs through him, but he tips his head against Steve's and doesn't pull away.

You shouldn't, he doesn't say. It'd be better for them if they didn't, but that's not who they are, it's clear. He doesn't feel surprised, so maybe he's always known that.

"I hurt you both. So badly," he whispers. "I know you can't forgive me for it. But I'm sorry anyway."

"I forgive you," Steve says, immediately, without giving an inch. "Sharon?"

"Me, too." She whispers it, and sets her cheek against his shoulder. He doesn't smell the same, he doesn't feel the same, but it's him and that's all she needs. It's so much more than she ever thought they'd get. "I forgive you, Bucky."

The people who created the Winter Soldier, who sent him on his mission, not so much. But it hadn't been Bucky who chose to hurt either of them.

He shakes his head, but doesn't argue. It's not that he thinks they're lying; he's sure they want to mean it. He just doesn't believe they can.

He makes himself take another deep, ragged breath. "You probably have questions." Maybe if he reminds them who he is now, they'll realize he should go. Maybe they'll let him, or even make him.

Steve chuckles. "That's an understatement, pal."

He sounds as crazed with relief as she feels, but they aren't over the hump yet. Who knows how long that might take? "Come on," she murmurs, and looks up at them both. "We can talk inside."

He takes it as a subtle request and removes his arm from her waist, lowers his hand from Steve's shoulder, and tries to take a half-step back so that he can follow them.

Instead of letting Bucky go, Steve shifts to his side, keeping one arm around Bucky's back. Sharon leads them, glancing over her shoulder every few steps to make sure they're both still there, then opens the door for them.

He's not sure if Steve's hanging on to him to keep him from bolting or for another reason, but it doesn't really matter. He walks side-by-side with his best friend to the door and follows Sharon inside.

He hesitates in the hall, but remembering she'd mentioned coffee, shifts direction to enter the kitchen and goes to stand at the end of the island.

She really can't get over seeing him here, in this house, where she'd imagined him so many times. "Aunt Peggy picked a good spot," she manages, trying to find something, anything to break the silence as she goes to fill the coffee maker.

"This place isn't your typical safe house, but it's pretty damn secure. And isolated."

"It's nice," he says again, softly, as Steve takes up position on the side of the island next to him. "I didn't - I wasn't going to - she offered."

"I know."

She measures out coffee and looks over at him, her eyes softening. "I'm glad she did."

He nods, and is quiet for a second or two. "How long has she been...like that?"

She glances over at Steve, who's keeping an eye on his best friend, then looks back at him. "Since before I was brought to 1944 by the cube," she tells him, quiet.

"And that's two years ago, now."

He nods again. "She mostly seemed... annoyed by it."

He doesn't know how to ask the question, or even if he should.

Sharon huffs a small, wry laugh. "She is. Very annoyed by it. But she has her moments of clarity still. More than the other kind, I think."

Or she hopes, at least.

"She said she--"

But it's too much, too fast, and he shies away from the thought of asking about the letters directly as though it's bitten him.

"--I saw the exhibit," he says instead. "But it didn't say..." He looks back and forth between her and Steve, settling on Sharon. "When you came back."

"When I did? No, I guess it wouldn't."

Before Nat dumped all of SHIELD's secrets onto the internet, it had been classified to hell and back, but now... "Although I guess people might find out about it now, if they look hard enough."

He gives Steve an uncertain look. Had he not been clear enough? He can't press.

"Two years," Steve murmurs, in response to that look. "Something about time dilation. Half a year with us was only a week, here and now."

Sharon nods and goes to the fridge to pull out the milk as the coffee percolates. "Steve's right. The cube dumped me in New York, on the sidewalk, about a week after I left."

He frowns slightly, trying to follow it, but in the end, it doesn't matter, does it? Peggy had given Sharon the letter he'd left for her, but Steve had still gone into the ice. The past couldn't be changed. They tried, twice.

"Oh," he says, finally. His glance goes to Steve. "And you woke up... three years ago?"

Steve nods, his arms tightening across his chest. "Sorry, pal," he says, wry. "I guess I didn't figure out your warning in time. And when I got back to the base, Sharon wasn't there to ask, so..."

Guilt, familiar and heavy, knots in her stomach. "I'm sorry, Bucky," she murmurs. "I would have tried to keep him safe, if I'd been able to stay."

Absolute, complete confusion flickers over his features, and the look in his eyes is lost before he realizes that Peggy must have meant something different than what he'd thought.

"It doesn't -- it wasn't your fault," he settles on, finally. "I didn't mean - please don't."

"Still." In his letter, he'd told her she made the right choice, but how could that be, when this is what happened?

Her hair falls over her shoulder, obscuring her face as she sets up three mugs, one for each of them. "But Steve was in New York when I came back. Thankfully."

At least she'd had someone. Maybe it had helped Steve as well, in some way.

Bucky nods and accepts one of the mugs, silently.

She hands another mug to Steve, then doctors her own with milk, sugar, and a little cinnamon, then turns to lean against the counter, thinking about Bucky at the Smithsonian. What must it have been like, reading his own history? That of his friends and companions? "We actually came here, for a while, after I came back," she murmurs.

"Aunt Peggy had kept all the files and your letters. They were up in the attic."

He holds the coffee in his right hand, trying not to draw attention to his gloved left, and watches them both.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, low and harsh but clear. "I - I tried to stay."

Steve makes a choked sound and shakes his head. "I know," he promises, desperate. "We know, Buck."

They could play the blame game all day long, each of them trying to shoulder what they think is their share, the others rejecting it. Sharon swallows her own guilt and comes to Bucky's side, then sets her hand gently on his left shoulder. "We missed you," she murmurs. "But it wasn't your fault, Bucky."

A faint shudder runs through him as she touches his left arm.

(you are to be the new fist of HYDRA)

He stares down at the flat surface of the island, not looking at either of them.

He trembles lightly beneath her touch, and she casts a worried glance over at Steve. "I know we have a lot of questions," she murmurs. "Are you going to be able to answer them?"

"I don't know." It's low and weary. The island is clean and bright and spacious, he observes, absently. Just like the kitchen, and the house, and the two of them standing to either side of him. He's the smudge of darkness in the middle of it all.

He lets out a slow breath and looks up. "I'll try."

"Whatever you can," Steve says, bracingly. "This isn't an interrogation, Buck."

"It's definitely not that," Sharon agrees. "Why don't we go sit down and get comfortable?"

"Maybe it should be."

He glances toward the living room, then back at them, waiting for someone to lead.

Steve pats his friend's shoulder and starts coaxing him toward the great room and one of the couches, where he'll be able to sit next to Bucky without crowding him.

Sharon follows, then curls into an armchair nearby, where she can see both of them without straining her neck. "What do you remember from after the fall?" she asks, finally.

These questions will be awful for all of them, but there's no way out but through. "How did they get a hold of you?"

He sits where Steve indicates he should, leaning against the back of the couch with his body aligned and his back straight, hands resting lightly on his thighs as he waits, passive, for the questions to follow.

Bucky looks up at Sharon as she asks the first. "Cold." There's no hesitation. "Pain in my arm, what was left of it. I don't know how that part happened exactly. I smashed against a rock, or a cliff face or something - it was big and rough and my arm caught, and, well."

He shrugs. "Cold's what I remember most. It was snowing. The snow was soft, except for the chunks of ice and rock. I lay there and watched it snow for a while. I don't know how long. Two Russian soldiers on patrol found me. They dragged me to an outpost."

She sees Steve's tension as it rises, guilt swallowing him whole. "Steve – "

It's not quick enough. His hand clenches, and the mug he's holding shatters, sending coffee and shards of crockery over his hand and knee and the carpet below.

He jerks away and to his feet at the shot-like sound, whirling on the instant into a crouch, left hand partly outstretched and ready to respond to the threat --

--only to realize that there's no threat here, no shots fired, nothing but Steve and broken ceramic and an aching storm of grief and agony that tints the very air around them with pain.

Instinct overrides conscious thought. He goes down on one knee in front of Steve and catches the other man's hand in his gloved left, turning it over, palm-up, looking for signs of injury.

Edited 2023-05-18 15:22 (UTC)

She startles, badly, at his swift motion, and hopes he didn't see the way she sloshed her own coffee as she jerked away.

Steve uncurls his fingers as Bucky reaches for his hand, showing a pinkened palm but no blood. "I'm fine," he says, and gives Sharon a rueful glance over Bucky's head. "Sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up."

"It's okay." Her pulse is finally beginning to slow. "It's just coffee."

Silently, he rises to his feet and retreats to the kitchen. He comes back with a clean dishrag that he'd wrung out under hot water, which he gives to Steve for his hand, and a clean towel that he uses to wipe up the splashed coffee, then as a repository for the pieces of mug.

He doesn't speak a single word through any of this, lost in his thoughts instead. Should he have lied? Would that have been better?

Bucky starts to clean up before either of them can do anything. Steve gives her a worried glance as he cleans off his hand, then reaches for the dirty, mug-filled towel from Bucky. "Here, pal. I'll take that."

As he heads to the kitchen, Sharon shakes her head and looks back at Bucky. "This is going to be tough for all of us," she murmurs. "Sit down, Bucky. It's okay."

He shakes his head, but sits down as instructed anyway. "Should I not have said?"

"No, it's just – "

" – that I didn't go looking for you." Steve finishes the sentence, then comes back to sit on the couch, looking at Bucky with his expression clear and open and full of sorrow. "I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't think – none of us had any clue you could have survived. I should have looked. I should have found you first."

He breathes, deep and shaky. "I'm sorry."

"You had to finish the mission." He says it automatically and with perfect agreement, like there's no doubt, like there could never have been any other option. Something else occurs to him, then, and he blinks and looks more closely at Steve.

"Of course you didn't know. You couldn't have. No one could. You don't need to apologize. There was no reason for you to look."

"That doesn't matter!" Steve's voice is tight and distraught. "We could have gotten Zola later. But you..."

His words choke in his throat, and he fists his hand on his knee. Sharon sets her own coffee aside – it was just an excuse anyway – and leans forward. "We didn't know," she murmurs. "But when I got back, and Tony Stark went through all the files and notes... he did theorize Zola was attempting to make you into a super soldier."

Something flickers in his glance at the mention of Stark's name, right before his gaze goes bleak, then empty.

He looks down at his left hand, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"He did." Quiet but clear. "He said I would be the new fist of HYDRA."

Steve stiffens, and she wonders how much of Zola's plan was pure pettiness: taking a symbol of freedom, Captain America's best friend, and turning him into a weapon for everything he'd hated.

"Not anymore," she says, low but firm.

He doesn't say anything, but just keeps looking at his hand.

You changed the century, Pierce had told him, and he hadn't been wrong. Seventy years of blood and death and destruction at his hands, clearing the path for HYDRA to achieve its ends. He doesn't have the pieces in any kind of order yet, most of them being shattered fragments and flickers in his broken mind, but he knows they're there. All of them. Just as the controls remain, ready for activation at any time. He may have walked away, but he's not free. He never will be.

He'll have to explain, if they don't already know. He's not sure what they know now. He just doesn't know how to begin.

"Bucky."

He's staring at his metal left hand, and she's not quite sure how to snap him out of it, or even if she should. "You don't belong to them anymore."

Ah. So that's where he should begin.

"Pierce is gone," he agrees, and finally looks up at them. "But there are others still out there. Any one of them could activate me, if they know the controls."

Both of them frown at him, bemused and unsettled.

"What do you mean, controls?" Steve asks. He already looks sick to his stomach.

He looks back and forth between them. "You said you knew about the bank," he says, finally, looking at Sharon."

It has the tone of a question, as if he's not certain he's remembering correctly.

"Yeah, but..."

What had Sitwell said? Something about wiping him. "Where they... where they wiped your memories."

He nods. "Yes. But it was more of a ... temporary station," he decides on, after struggling to come up with the right words. "No cryo chamber. Deviation from the usual procedure to allow field reset when required."

Natasha had said something about that. Cryo, in between missions.

She does her best not to visibly shiver. "If there's anyone else out there who can control you, we'll just need to find them, first. Before they try."

She doesn't understand. Looking at Steve, he sees that he doesn't, either. Then again, how could they?

"I don't know who's left with existing command access," he says, finally. "But anyone with the activation sequence could control the Winter Soldier. Anyone."

"Activation sequence?" She stares at him, startled, and Steve frowns, hard.

"What, like a program?"

He nods at Steve. It's as good an explanation as any. Maybe if he describes the process, that'll help them understand.

"The asset is best maintained in cryostasis for extended periods of inactivation," he recites, his tone cool, neutral, and empty. "For stability. Electrical craniotemporal neurostimulation ensures programming receptiveness without interference from prior periods of activation. Administration of activation codes readies the asset to receive mission parameters."

He speaks, flat and emotionless, as if reporting on nothing more concerning than the weather, and her stomach churns at what he says.

Electrical shocks. Cryo for years at a time. Scrambling his brain over and over again. Her voice is tight when she finally finds words. "Activation codes," she says. "Words? Words they use to... reset you?"

He nods again, this time at her. "A sequence of ten."

It's beyond horrifying. It's the worst thing she's ever heard, it's the most horrible torture she could imagine.

Steve takes a shaky breath and focuses on Bucky. "If it's a program," he says. "Maybe we can remove it."

"It's in my head, Steve." He says it as gently as he can, watching his best friend's face. "There's nothing to be done."

"You don't know that," Steve says, desperate. "You don't know that. Tony can do amazing things. Sharon, tell him."

"It's true," Sharon confirms. "I mean... maybe it's possible."

Tony Stark. He'd been in the target brief the Winter Soldier had been given; Howard's son. Howard, who had been working with Project Rebirth, trying to perfect the serum.

Howard, who he'd killed.

He's never met Tony. He doesn't think he has, anyway. He'd never been an active target, he's sure of that much, although something teasing at the back of his mind suggests that he might have been evaluated as a potential one at some point, he's not sure exactly when. Either way, he can't imagine that it would be a good idea for him to allow the younger man to get his hands on him. Especially if--

"You said he... theorized," he says, finally. "About - is he trying to, to develop - like Erskine?"

Like his father?

"No, nothing like that," she promises.

"It was when I had just come back. He was scanning me, to make sure I was okay. I told him a little about... about the experiments Howard was running. About the resonance and how it was fading more slowly than you."

That's something, anyway. He's not sure exactly what, but it's something.

He finds that he can't wrap his mind around the idea, much less what it'll require of him. To be back on a table, with another scientist rummaging around in his mind, more straps and restraints and all the rest but for this purpose - he can't calculate whether it's worth trying or not. Can't even hold the possibility in his broken mess of a brain.

He realizes he's been quiet for too long and looks back and forth between them again. "Does it need to be now?" The faintest hint of a desperate plea leaks through.

The faint distress in his voice arrows straight to her heart. And, she's sure, to Steve's. "No," she promises, before Steve can say anything. "It doesn't need to be now."

Steve nods agreement, though she can tell the only thing holding him back from placing a call to Tony is his desire to stay next to Bucky. "Not now," he agrees. "But an option. Maybe."

"I don't," he manages, through the tightness in his throat that's currently rising to choke him. Shudders wrack his body as he fights to get the words out, trying to explain what he's unable even to fully understand, fear and despair and other more complex emotions that he hasn't felt in years twisting together in a tangle within him.

"I can't, I-- he. You-- please. Please."

"Bucky!"

She pushes off the chair and comes to kneel in front of him, as Steve puts a concerned hand on his friend's shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"Can't," he pants through clenched teeth, the cords in his neck standing out as the whiplash of remembered pain rips through him anew, over and over, trying to force his back to arch in a futile attempt to escape, trying to tear him apart. Each word is a thready, ragged whisper. "Can't. I can't - can't choose. Can't. Please. Please. Please don't. Don't ask--"

But that's too close to a personal demand, he realizes too late, and the white fire of agony takes him, robbing him of speech entirely, along with breath and sight.

Edited 2023-05-18 20:24 (UTC)

She has no idea what's happening, only that Bucky seems to be in the middle of something almost like a seizure. Alarmed, Steve grips him with both hands, trying to keep him from shaking so hard. "Buck? Bucky!"

"We won't," Sharon says, desperately, latching onto the one thing she can parse. "We're not asking, Bucky. I'm sorry."

Somehow he manages to keep the howl locked behind his teeth as his head falls back, as the conditioned response races along muscle and bone and nerve in familar lines of suffering. He can hear Steve calling his name, can hear Sharon's frantic reassurance, but he can't answer either of them. Not at first.

Not until the punishing wave rolls through him and fades into the ache of aftermath can he even try to do anything at all other than endure. His head is resting against the back of the couch, he finds. He rolls it to the side so that he can see them.

"I'm okay," he whispers, throat dry with the effort of not screaming. "It's okay."

"None of that is okay!" Steve says, his voice hard in his worry and fear. Sharon gets up and goes to the kitchen, coming back with a glass of water, which she hands to Bucky.

"Drink," she tells him. "What was that?"

He glances down at the floor and away from Steve, unable to bear the concern at first, but is able to distract himself with the water Sharon gives him. Obediently, he drinks, finishing half the glass in just a few swallows before he lowers it. He cradles it loosely between his hands, considering it for a second, then looks back up at them.

"Maybe not okay, but not unexpected," he says, quietly. He already knows they're going to ask him to explain that, and tries to get ahead of it by treating it as necessary intelligence.

"The Winter Soldier is a weapon. I'm a weapon. Weapons don't have needs. Or wants. Personal choices. That kind of thing. Those interfere with the mission. So I was ... conditioned... not to have them either."

It's a good thing Steve isn't holding anything else breakable, from the way his hand fists.

For Sharon, what comes is a rush of memory; all the times he'd made decisions, told her what he wanted, acted on those wants – or didn't, as he chose.

Steve looks like he wants to murder someone. She has to say she feels the same way. For now, she swallows hard. "We'll be careful," she murmurs.

And they'll work on that, too, if he'll let them.

The anger on Steve's face, the shock in Sharon's eyes --

"I'm sorry," he whispers, helplessly. "I'm sorry."

She lowers herself to her knees once more, one hand on his knee. "It's not your fault, Bucky," she murmurs. "We don't blame you."

He shakes his head, but otherwise stays perfectly still, not reacting to her touch. Not visibly, anyway, although it rocks him like a thunderclap.

"I've brought you both nothing but pain since I showed up outside your apartment," he says, barely audible. "It's why I didn't - it's why I left. I should leave again, now. And you should let me go."

Steve stares at him in thunderstruck disbelief. "Let you go? Are you – no. No, not a chance."

Sharon's brows are tugging together in a frown – why I left – but she's shaking her head, too. "It'll be worse if you go," she says, quiet but certain. "It'll hurt so much more, Bucky."

He flinches at that, visibly, and tries a different direction. "I'm a wanted criminal," he reminds them. "A terrorist. You'd be seen as aiding and abetting, or worse."

"You're my friend," Steve says, stubbornly. "I'm not going to make you face all this alone. Not anymore. Not ever again."

The corner of his mouth quirks just a little, rueful. "To the end of the line."

He can see Steve's beaten face under his fist if he closes his eyes. He can see the bruise at Sharon's temple, the tears in her eyes, the way she'd hung from the ropes he'd tied her with. He should keep resisting, keep pushing, insist that he leave. He's just not sure how, since he's not sure enough now that it'd be to their benefit--

(it'll hurt so much more)

--rather than for his.

Maybe in a day or two they'll change their minds, once they realize the full extent of the problem he represents. For now--

"Okay." Soft, but clear. "If you're sure. If you're both sure."

Steve makes a sound and embraces his friend, and Sharon breathes, as evenly as she can, and lowers her forehead to his knee.

"Good," she murmurs. "Because we're sure."

He lets himself lean into Steve's embrace, and hesitates only a second before he brushes his right hand very lightly over Sharon's hair.

Testing himself; testing them; maybe both things. It doesn't matter, he thinks.

His hand is light as a breath over her hair, but she can feel it. And maybe he's not touching her the way he used to, but he isn't touching her to harm, to hurt, to subdue. Not anymore.

Her shoulders shift down with her breath, before she looks up at him, and smiles, a little. "Welcome home," she says, soft. "We missed you."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, still leaning into the curve of his best friend's arm as his gaze meets hers. What he says is meant for them both. "That it took me so long."

"You're here," Steve says, steadfast. "That's what matters."

Sharon nods. Gently, she tips her head into his touch.

"I guess I am." Very carefully, he pets Sharon's hair again, and looks from her to Steve.

"I don't know. What to ask." How to ask, anything, not to put too fine a point on it.

"Maybe we don't need anymore questions for a while," Steve tells him. "We can tell you what's happened with us for the last few years, in a bit."

"I can go down to the village," Sharon murmurs. "Get some more food."

And give them a few moments to themselves.

His glance swings back to Sharon with the precision of a rifle sight. "Is it safe?"

The question's absolutely serious.

"Yes," she promises. "It's safe."

For her, anyway.

He nods, and makes no further protest.

It's not his decision to make.

"Okay."

The last thing she wants to do is move away from him, but Steve's here. She levers herself up to her feet and studies them both. "I'll be back soon."

"We'll be here," Steve assures her. Bucky glances at his face on hearing the resolute firmness in his tone. "Both of us."

"Good."

She gives them a last, lingering glance, then heads to the kitchen and the place where she'd put her phone and keys.

They'll be here. She believes that.

He doesn't know what time it is. Late, he's sure of that. He'd stayed with Steve while Sharon had gone down into the town, and when she returned, they'd focused on other things by some kind of unspoken mutual consensus. He'd moved among them like a ghost, each step uncertain as though walking on knives, and tried as best he could to be what they needed.

He's dismally aware just how much of a failure it had been in that regard, but he doesn't know what else he could have done. Should still do. What to do next.

He'd talked Steve out of staying in the same room with him, somehow, and made something up about not - not being able to sleep with anyone else around, anymore. He's not sure Steve was completely convinced, but he'd let it stand. It had also spared Sharon from even having to even think about the question, which is the absolute fucking least he could do, all things considered.

He'd sworn up and down that he'd be here in the morning, and shut the door to the guest room. There he'd waited in silence until he didn't hear any further noises in the house. He didn't try to sleep; he couldn't. The last thing anyone needs is to be woken by his screams, if he can't get the nightmares under control.

He waits until it's as late as he can before he slips out of the room and down the hall, moving as stealthily as possible. The back porch will do. There's chairs there and on the grass beyond, and a clear view of the night sky. He can watch the stars while he waits for dawn.

She wonders if Steve's managed to fall asleep. She certainly hasn't; not knowing that Bucky's just down the hall, not when there's still so much more they need to do for him. Even the candelight stars from her lamp don't soothe her the way they usually do; nor does his photo, smiling at her from the bedside table.

Getting a glass of water is as good an excuse as any to wander out of her room, robe over her tank top and shorts, but once she's downstairs, a glance out at the back porch distracts her. Very quietly so as not to startle him, she opens the door. "Mind a little company?"

Stars or not, he's hypervigilant and aware enough of everything going on around him to have noticed the shadow cast by her soft approach. He's ready when the door opens, and doesn't jump.

Bucky turns to look over his shoulder at her, then tips his head at the next chair over as an invitation. "I don't mind," he thinks to clarify.

Not that he could likely protest even if he did, but he doesn't. He thinks he doesn't, anyway.

"Did I wake you?"

"No." She comes to take the chair he'd indicated, settling back into it and tipping her face up to the stars, trying hard not to think about all the times they'd sat together and watched the sky spin slowly overhead.

"Couldn't sleep?"

He shakes his head: no. He leaves out that he hadn't even bothered to try.

"You too, I guess." It's not exactly a question, and he searches desperately for something else to say. "The stars are clearer here."

"Than in DC? Yeah. A lot clearer."

She watches them for a moment more before she speaks again, her eyes still on the stars. "Aunt Peggy didn't set you up, you know. She told me and Steve to give you a little time. She was just worried about you."

"I know she was. About you, too. Both of you." He glances away from the sky and over at her.

"I figured she'd tell you. I just wasn't sure when. Or if - if she'd remember." A longer beat, before he swallows, hard.

"Maybe I shouldn't have gone. But it was ... good ... to see her again."

"I'm glad you did, all things considered."

She looks over at him now, meeting his glance with her own steady one. "She liked seeing you, too."

He can't hold her gaze for too long, not with what he has to say, and his own slips down to her hand instead.

"I didn't tell her. About SHIELD. About-- about any of it."

"Yeah."

The word comes out as a sigh as she looks back up at the sky. "Smart. It's a hell of a shock."

"Her assistant - Anna? - she said something about keeping her away from the news, like you asked. So."

The ghost of a smile flickers at the corner of his mouth for an instant. "Miss Carter."

Her own lips twitch, and she slides a glance his way without moving her head. "I still prefer agent," she murmurs, before she frowns up at the sky.

"If that's something I even am, anymore."

His glance flicks up to her face before he stares down at the grass and earth out in the yard. It gleams silver under the moonlight and starlight, he notices, almost absently.

"I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

She shakes her head, her thoughts swirling and drifting. "I can't believe I never saw it. I can't believe it got this far. SHIELD did so much good work... but it was always rotten at the center. The whole time."

"A lot of people never saw it. They know how to hide. And those who did..."

He trails off there for a second, breathing carefully, then makes himself say it.

"... I killed most of them. Probably."

"I won't lie, that's pretty weird to think about."

And it's the truth. But so is this. "But you probably blame yourself for that a lot more than I do."

"Pierce told me I changed the century."

It's low and weary, but clear.

"You probably did."

Almost definitely, considering the people he's killed. She watches him, steady. "But if it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. This is on HYDRA, Bucky. Not you."

He shakes his head. "But I still did it."

"Yeah."

There's no hiding from that, either. "We're going to have to figure out how to deal with that."

"We," he starts, and stops before he gets any further. He doesn't even know how to say it, where to begin.

"We. You." He swallows hard, trying to feel his way with each word. "You don't... have to."

"I know." Her lips turn up in a soft, crooked smile.

"But I'm gonna do it anyway."

"Why?" It bursts out of him before he can keep it locked behind his teeth. He adjusts as fast as he can manage to provide some explanation. She deserves that.

"It's not - I mean. Of course you would. You're - you're that kind of person. I ... I know that. I remember that. Mostly. Now."

He flattens his right hand against the arm of the chair he's in, feeling the wood under his fingers, trying to ground himself in the present.

"But. But. Sharon. I hurt you. I scared you. I still do. You - you don't have to, to hurt yourself by doing this. I was gone. You had a life."

The awful thing is, he's not wrong. He'd been gone. She'd mourned him. And even if she hadn't quite been to the point of moving on, she'd been nearing it. He wouldn't have wanted her to be alone and grieving forever, and neither would she. If she made herself, she's pretty sure she could even see what that life would have looked like.

And he had scared her. Hurt her. There's a part of her even now that's wary and ready to spring away from any attack.

But that life that could have been is gone now, and she's been hurt and scared before. "You were gone," she murmurs. "But you're back. And that changes everything. Bucky, there's no way I could ever do anything but help you."

He buries his face in his right hand, unable to look at her, afraid of what he might see in her eyes.

He's not entirely conscious of what he's saying as he whispers, "A guardian angel."

Her heart squeezes, hard and painful, and her stomach lurches abruptly to the right. Of all the things she might have expected him to say...

"That's right," she murmurs, her throat thick. "Your guardian angel."

A shiver runs over his skin as flickers of memory flash through his mind like flipping through pages of a book that he can't quite read.

Blue light overhead. Falling (through the air) to the ground. Moonlight. Music.

He pushes himself clumsily out of his chair and lands on his knees on the deck, his head hanging forward as he tries to make himself breathe.

"Bucky!"

She's up and out of her chair in the next second, kneeling in front of him, her hands on his shoulders. "Breathe."

Though her heart is hammering, she tries to keep her voice low and calm. "You're okay. Just breathe."

"It's not - I'm not - don't worry," he manages. He doesn't pull back from her, as he's not sure he could, but he twists slowly to his right so that he can put his left arm as far away from her as possible. As he does he shifts, until he's sitting on the wooden plank flooring instead of kneeling.

Her hand is still on his right shoulder. He tips his head toward it, his hair falling over her wrist.

Her right hand falls away from his shoulder, but her left stays where it is. When he tips his head toward her touch, his hair brushes over her wrist and the back of her hand, and she can't keep herself from turning her hand to touch the ends with her fingertips. "Your hair is so long."

What an inane thing to say. But she just can't quite get used to it.

"Nobody's cut it in a while," he murmurs, holding very still under her touch. "There was no reason to, I guess."

After a second, he tilts his head just a little further, trying to let her know he doesn't mind that she's playing with his hair, and catches the barest whiff of scent.

"You're wearing perfume." It's out before he thinks about it, although hesitant and uncertain. "Is that - new?"

"Not new. I just didn't have it on me when I fell through the portal."

He tips his head a little further, and she pauses, then allows herself to push his hair back and over his ear. He hasn't been taking care of it, clearly, but it's clean and silky and when she pushes it out of his face, she can see him. Bucky. This face she never thought she'd see again. "Does it smell nice?"

A frisson of sensation runs through him at the feel of her fingers in his hair, against his ear. He looks up at her, eyes dark in the dim light, searching her face as though he's memorizing it; memorizing her.

Maybe he is. He's not sure. "Yes," he says, finally.

"Good." He used to study her like this, before; back when he thought he'd be the one losing her, and not the other way around. Her heart stutters and aches, but she doesn't pull away. A few measures of Moonlight Serenade float idly through her head.

"We used to sit out and watch the stars a lot together."

"That's why it feels so familiar." He sounds certain of that much, at least, as his glance traces over the lines and angles and curves of her face and hair.

"Yep." She smiles, then runs her hand down his arm and takes his hand in hers, tugging lightly. "Come on. Let's see if we can make it feel more familiar."

Surprise flickers in his eyes, but he curls his fingers around hers and lets her draw him up to his feet. He's still careful to keep himself slightly angled with his left arm away from her, though. "Where are we going?"

"Just out here."

She leads him off the porch and into the backyard, where the grass whispers around their feet and the trees smudge shadows around them. It isn't that field in France, but it's the closest facsimile she can offer here in Virginia. "Sometimes we'd walk hand in hand, like this – "

Her fingers curl a little more firmly around his. "Sometimes arm in arm."

The grass is cool and soft under his feet, and he glances down at their hands as she holds on to him, then at her feet - which are also bare, he notices, as are her legs beneath her robe.

"Are you cold?"

"I'm fine," she promises. The grass is a little damp, dew sticking blades of it to her feet, but it isn't uncomfortable. "I should have brought a blanket or something to sit on. You used to keep a ground cloth in a tree near the field, so I wouldn't get my clothes dirty."

"Smart of me, it sounds like." He considers that for only a second before starting to shrug out of the light hooded jacket he's wearing.

She has to let go of his hand for him to get the jacket off, so she does, but she doesn't move away, only stands there, amused.

"What're you doing?"

He slips the jacket the rest of the way off and holds it out to her in his right hand.

"Something to sit on."

She takes the jacket in her right hand and holds out her left for him to hold, smiling.

"Still got it, Barnes."

He blinks slowly at that, honestly uncertain - wasn't it the obvious thing to do? - but takes her hand again without hesitation and waits for her to lead him to where she wants them to go.

"I almost landed right on top of you," she tells him, as she walks slowly with him toward the back line of the lawn. "That night I arrived. And we just kept coming back to that spot, to walk around and talk and look at the stars. Dance, sometimes."

There's a tree near the edge of the lawn; she lets of his hand and spreads the jacket on the grass beneath it. From here, they can look out over the valley, see the constellations as they rise above the other ridge.

"Blue light," he muses. "You... you rolled over and over. I told you to stay down?" It's a little unsure. "I - things aren't clear. My mind - it's not... whole." Not yet, anyway, and maybe never. "It's all there, I think, but it's... confused."

He waits for her to take a seat on the jacket before lowering himself to the ground on her left.

"It's pretty here."

"It's okay. I can help you remember."

She puts her arms around her knees and turns her head to smile at him. "And you're right. Blue light; I rolled. You told me to stay down, and I kept not listening to you."

Steve had said much the same, after she'd left to go into town, when they started talking about Brooklyn. Or rather, when Steve had started talking, and Bucky had struggled with memories that were fragmented and broken, too much to put together again all at once.

Bitterness rises and he forces it back, as he had before. HYDRA's stolen so much from him already - from all of them. He won't let them steal these precious minutes happening here and now.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I wanted to be on my feet when I found out where I was."

Sharon tips her head back, looking up at the stars. "You could have shot me, but you didn't. You listened to me. You made sure I wasn't hurt. And even though you had to report me, you made it as easy on me as you could."

You made sure I wasn't hurt. Not then, anyway. He feels his breath leave him as though he's taken a hard blow to the gut, and tries not to let it show.

"I never wanted to hurt you." Low, but steady. "I'm sorry I did."

But he'd been forced to. He'd been manipulated and tormented and made to forget himself so that HYDRA could use his body for all their ill-gotten gains. "I know you didn't."

Sharon looks over at him, eyes dark in the starlight. "I know you don't. And I wouldn't be out here with you if I thought it was going to happen again."

She has her knees drawn up and her arms draped loosely over them; he shifts a little, sitting cross-legged beside her, and rests his right hand on one knee while he plants his left hand flat against the ground on the side away from her, trying to avoid clenching his fists or doing anything that'd distress her.

The trust she's expressing humbles him almost beyond words. He doesn't know if it's a good idea to ask, but he has to know. "Did I hurt you again? When I - you said it would be worse if, if I left. Did I - the other night - did I..."

"Did it hurt when you jumped out my window and left me alone again? Bucky – " She shakes her head, her hair whispering over her shoulders. "Of course it did."

The last few days, it's like her heart never stopped breaking, like those two years of grief had decided to hit again all at once. She hasn't cried the way she did, alone in her apartment before Nat showed up, since she and Steve were here, reading his last words to them and getting drunk on her father's expensive Scotch. "I know – I think I know why you left. Maybe you were right to do it. But it still hurt."

He lowers his head, staring at the ground in front of him, not really seeing it.

"You were so scared," he whispers. "I thought - I thought I was hurting you just by being there. I didn't know - I didn't mean - I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Again. Again. Helplessly, hopelessly, uselessly sorry. Acid coats the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.

She swallows, remembering. Scared, oh yes, she had been. He'd been in her apartment, where he'd attacked her before, and if he'd tried, if he'd wanted to, he could easily have attacked her again. She knows damn well she's only alive because she hadn't been a target, because she'd been more useful as bait.

But that was the Winter Soldier. And whatever's left of that in him... at least he has some control over himself now. "I don't know if we're going to be able to make it through this without hurting each other," she murmurs, and turns her head to study him. "But I don't care. However much any of this hurts isn't anything to how it felt to lose you."

They won't. Or at least he won't, no matter how hard he tries. The pain he'd caused them both earlier by answering questions truthfully and by failing to be the man they both remember has already proven that.

He sees her shift a little, but keeps his gaze firmly fixed on the ground for the moment. "I told Steve this already. And I don't think you're going to believe me any more than he did. But it wasn't your fault, Sharon."

Now he does raise his eyes, turning to look at her as he does. "That I fell, I mean. It wasn't."

"I get that you don't blame me," she says, soft. "But that doesn't mean it wasn't my fault."

She shifts, releasing her arms from around her knees and folds her legs over so she's sitting on her hip, facing him. "I would have done anything to save you. I should have done anything. Bucky... you don't know what it means, seeing you. Even with, with everything. You were gone. You were gone."

And now he's here, and real, and solid, and still out of reach but alive. Alive. "I can't lose you again. I won't."

"It wasn't your fault." His eyes are dark, but clear, his gaze level and steady. "Or Steve's. If anyone's, it was mine. But we all tried, Sharon. I don't blame you because there's nothing to blame you for."

The breath that he draws is shaky and uneven. "I - I tried to, to say this before. But it, I, I didn't - it didn't come out right. I don't w-- I don't mean this to hurt you. I swear I don't. But I'm not - I'm not the same as you remember, when I left you a w-- when I died, or close enough to. I'm broken. I may never be whole again."

"Never say never."

Despite the lightness of the words, she means them down to her bones. Sharon shakes her head at him, ruthlessly shoving down on the fragments of her broken heart. "But even if that's true, even if you're never that Bucky Barnes I knew, even if you don't, don't love me anymore, or can't – "

It's her turn to take a deep and shaky breath. "That's not why I'm helping. I'm not in it for the conditions."

"It's not that I d--" He bites down on his treacherous tongue hard enough to draw blood, and makes himself take a second before he tries again.

"... can't?"

The thing is, she knows he'd try. In order to keep from hurting her further, she knows he'd try. If he can. Even if he didn't feel any of it anymore.

"People change," she murmurs. "Even without HYDRA messing around in your head, maybe it would have changed for you anyway." She casts about desperately for something else to say, some liferaft of a topic. "What didn't you say, before? When you left me a – ?"

He shakes his head, but doesn't say anything at first. It takes him several long seconds to find his way to the words. Should he tell her? Would it help or only make things worse?

He doesn't know. But he can't see how lying would make things any better.

"A widow," he whispers. "Is what I was going to say. Before."

She blinks at him, startled.

It's not that she hadn't felt that way, but... "We weren't married."

"That's why I didn't say it." His glance drops from her face to her hands. "I told you. I don't - some of what I remember's a little mixed up."

"I know, but..."

But that's quite a thing to mix up. "You'd asked me to come back to Brooklyn, but that was all."

He takes a slow, careful breath. "That was all, for then," he clarifies, and finally looks back up at her.

Sharon swallows, hard, as new loss crashes over her. She'd mourned the life she didn't get to have, back then, with him, but she hadn't had any idea anything like this had ever crossed his mind.

She breathes deep and blinks quickly a few times, then gives him a small, sad, crooked smile. "Well, I would have said yes," she murmurs. "For the record."

He hesitates, then reaches for her left hand with his right, very slowly, each small movement careful and deliberate. Bucky cradles her hand in his and looks down at it as he brushes his thumb over her fingers, just once.

"I won't hold you to it now," he murmurs. "But I'm ... it's good to know. Thank you."

He brushes his thumb over her knuckles, and she wonders if he's seeing the same might-have-beens that are vibrant and clear in her own mind. After a moment, she turns her hand and curls her fingers around his.

"Well, maybe we put a pin in it for a little bit," she says, aiming for a lighter tone despite the thick ache in her throat.

He nods, unable to speak, and doesn't let go of her hand. After another few moments of silence, he looks back up at the sky again.

"You must have liked growing up here."

"I really did."

She keeps her hand in his, and looks out over the yard. "I've always loved this house. I'm really happy I finally got to show it to you, after all."

"You showed me a picture of it before, didn't you?" He glances over at her.

"Yes."

He'd called it a mansion. She looks at the house, trying to see it through his eyes. "Right before I took a picture of the both of us."

He blinks, startled, and then his eyes suddenly widen as memory slams into him. "Magic camera," he whispers.

She blinks, surprised, then smiles. "Yeah, that's what you said. You loved it."

For a moment, he can not only remember what it felt like, but he feels it again. The surprise followed by wonder, something that he thinks was joy and delight - feelings he hasn't known in so long he's forgotten them almost entirely.

Bucky closes his eyes for a second, trying to hold on to them before they slip away.

His expression shifts, and for a moment he looks younger, lighter, as he closes his eyes. Sharon twines her fingers with his, unable to look away from his face.

"There you are," she murmurs. "Hi, baby."

He doesn't want to open his eyes, doesn't want to see the grief and sorrow in hers. It's selfish as hell, but he lets himself hide in his self-imposed blindness for a few seconds longer as he squeezes her hand.

"Hi," he whispers, and remembers what she'd said before that she wanted him to call her again. "Angel."

It's the smallest of things, a single memory, and they're only scratching the surface. But he'd said he didn't remember that man, and this means that maybe that doesn't have to be true forever.

Her smile flickers more warmly as he calls her by that pet name, the one she hasn't heard in so long. "If I had my phone on me, I could show you that photo."

This time he does open his eyes, from sheer surprise. Bucky stares at her.

"You still have it?"

"Of course."

As if she would ever, could ever have gotten rid of that photo. "It's the only picture I have of the both of us."

"I didn't go through your photos," he explains. "I just deleted those last two pictures and recorded that video. I didn't... I thought I shouldn't invade your privacy any more than I already had."

"It's okay," she murmurs. "I'll show it to you."

Her phone is in the house, up in her room, but she can show it to him in the morning. She doesn't want to leave this spot with him just yet.

He nods, but makes no move to stand. Unconsciously, his hand tightens a little on hers, as if to keep her here with him.

"In the morning," she clarifies, as his hand tightens on hers. She gives him a sweet smile.

"Or when we go back inside. No rush."

"Oh." He tries not to let the surge of relief show, and is pretty sure he's failed at that, especially since he's already given himself away with the way he's holding on to her.

Bucky swallows, determined to hide any reluctance, and says, "I should let you get some sleep, though."

Her smile grows warm and fond and a little crooked. "You always were good at taking care of me," she murmurs.

"But I don't want to go in yet. I want to spend more time with you. Is that okay?"

He nods, immediate and without any hesitation at all. "Yes. It is."

There's a quiet ache deep in his chest as he looks at her smile, and he can't keep himself from asking. "Was I?"

"Yeah. Me, Steve... everyone, really."

How many times had he made sure they ate, slept, were comfortable and easy? "And you were pretty protective of my reputation, too."

He looks up at the tree above them, trying to chase a flicker of memory, then out at the sky. It's bright with so many stars that even the moonlight can't dim them.

"There was - you hummed a song," he says, finally. "On the dock."

"Moonlight Serenade."

She can remember it like it was yesterday; the feeling of dancing slow and close with him for the first time, her amusement at his teasing, how she didn't want to let go. "My second night at the camp. You had your friend switch out the discs so we could have a slow dance."

He tries to catch any recollection of it from the scattered shards of his mind, and comes up with flashes of warmth, of golden hair, of people and laughter and camaraderie that feels lost and distant now.

"Sneaky of me," he murmurs. "And you let me get away with it?"

"I liked you," she says, simply.

It had been flattering, charming, amusing. But what it really came down to was just that: she'd liked him. So she'd wanted that dance.

Now, she looks up at the sky and hums again, soft and low, the melody of 'Moonlight Serenade.'

The impulse strikes him to ask her if she wants to dance again, and he dismisses it just as quickly. The comparison between who he is now and who he was will do nothing but bring her pain when he inevitably fails to live up to his own past, not to mention he's not going to ask her to step close to him or even look at his left arm, much less allow herself to have to come in contact with it.

He watches her for a second, then looks down at their linked hands instead.

He shifts, and the motion catches her attention. When she glances over, she see him looking down, studying their hands. "Does this help?"

The memories. Sitting here. All of it. "Hearing about it?"

He nods. "I think so." Bucky looks back up at her. "But I don't w--"

The sudden closure of his throat catches him by surprise, and he makes a frustrated sound before trying again. "--as long as it's no trouble. For you."

He catches himself up on the conditioning again – again, even for such a small thing – and she squeezes his hand, trying to help him ground himself. "It's no trouble," she promises.

"We can look at pictures. Read old letters. I'll tell you all about it, Bucky. I don't mind."

"Steve was trying something similar," he murmurs. "Before. Things from - from back in Brooklyn. But it made him sad, too."

Of course it made him sad, the same way this is making her sad. There's no way through this that won't be lined with sorrow and hurt and new grief all the way along the path.

But it's worth it. It's all worth it. "He was more sad before," she murmurs. "After we lost you. So was I. Being sad now doesn't mean we don't want to do it."

"It's good you had each other," he says, softly, meaning every word.

"It really was."

Steve could hardly be more different from his best friend, but his steady support had been a bastion for her all this time. "I don't know what I would have done without him."

"It's a good thing Pierce and Zola both are already dead." Something grim and bleak threads into his words. "I'll never forgive myself for what I did to him. To you. To you both."

"We'll never forgive them for what they did to you."

Sharon looks over at him, runs her thumb lightly over his knuckles. It's the same had that had struck her, bound her, tied her up to hang mid-air like a target... but it's also the same hand that had touched her with so much love she'd felt filled with it to bursting. "There's a lot to figure out and work through. But we will, Bucky. Steve and I, we won't abandon you."

"You never would. Even if you should. When you should," he corrects himself, and looks up at her, searching her face.

"I don't - don't expect, expect anything. You know that. Don't you?"

She shakes her head slightly, uncertain. "You mean you don't expect us to help?"

"It's..." He trails off into silence, unable to find the right words at first.

"No," he says, finally. "I know you will. But when it doesn't work, when it's not enough... I want you to know it's okay to stop."

"It wouldn't be okay," she says, without room for argument. "But we wouldn't stop even if it were."

He draws a ragged breath, then another. He doesn't understand how she can be so sure, so determined. Why she won't even entertain the idea that he's an acceptable loss.

Nor does he understand why what she says makes him want to weep. A shudder runs through him as he fights for self-control.

"Bucky," she murmurs, and covers their linked hands with her other palm. "You're right. Part of it is because that's who we are. Steve, especially. But it's also because we love you."

Another shudder runs through him, then another, each harder than the last. Other than that, he doesn't move; fights not to move, not to collapse, not to - not to allow himself to appear erratic, to appear unstable--

"They took everything," he whispers, barely audible. "And now - now I can't, I can't--"

She's shifting before she realizes it, letting go of his hand and coming onto her knees so she can reach her arms around him, drawing him in. "Come here," she murmurs. "We'll help you get it back, Bucky. As much as we can. As much as you can. I promise."

He flinches as her arms go around him, instinctive in his attempt to keep her from touching the metal of his left arm which he'd been trying so hard to keep from her since - since waking up, since Steve had woken him up - only for the very flinch to bring him more deeply into her embrace.

The low moan that escapes him is not unlike the sound of a wounded animal in pain. His right arm goes around her waist, and he lowers his face to her shoulder to hide as he tries desperately to get control of himself.

"Bucky." Her voice is a soft murmur, and she holds him closer as he pushes his face to her shoulder, as he holds onto her like he's clinging for dear life. Beneath the thing material of his shirt, she can feel the ridges and bumps where his metal arm was connected to his shoulder, and she wonders, not for the first time, how much it must hurt. How heavy it is. Whether he can feel anything through it.

Her other hand comes up to curve palm and fingers against his hair, cradling his head against her own body.

Her hand cups his head, and the feel of her fingers in his hair sends a confused bolt of pure, overwhelming sensation through him.

He gasps, and his arm tightens around her.

He doesn't push her away; instead, he clutches her closer. She shoves ruthlessly down on the faint thread of panic that is the memory of being attacked by the Winter Soldier and lets him cling to her, lets him pull her closer.

Very gently, she strokes her hand over his hair.

As close as she is to him now, it's impossible to miss the way his body shivers and the way his breath jerks in his chest at her touch.

Other than that, he doesn't move, holding himself as still as he can with the last vestiges of rigid control.

The way he trembles, the way his breath catches, all of it only makes her hold him more closely. Sharon sets her own cheek against his hair, pressing herself against him.

"I'm here," she murmurs. "You have me back, too."

"Sharon." Her name on his lips is an aching, breathless cry. He couldn't pull away from her gentle hold now to save his life.

"Please." He's not even sure what he's pleading for. "Please."

As much as he doesn't want to hurt her, he's going to shatter her heart all over again, as easily as if it were made of glass and not the harder stuff she's relied on all these years as an agent.

She doesn't know what he's asking for, except that it might be for her to keep holding onto him. "I'm here," she murmurs, again, and shifts closer, as close as she can, her belly and chest pressed against his side. "Hold onto me, Bucky. Just hold on."

Her soft words are compassion and comfort, command and permission at once. He shudders again and turns his head into her shoulder, drawing in her scent, his breath warm against the skin at the curve of her throat.

It's her turn to shiver, to swallow a tiny noise that threatens to crawl up her chest. It's that sensation, one she hasn't felt since the morning before that doomed mission: him here in her arms, his breath warm against her skin. Her eyes fall closed without any conscious effort from her mind, and she threads her fingers carefully through the strands of his hair.

She shivers against him and he freezes, certain that he's done something wrong, scared or alarmed her somehow, only for the breath to rush out of him again all at once as she runs her fingers through his hair.

He's lost and confused but that doesn't change how she feels when he breathes out in a puff of warmth against her throat, against the spot he used to kiss and tease and lavish attention on. She trembles again, harder, and can't keep herself from turning to press a kiss to his hair.

"There you go," she murmurs, just to say something comforting.

She shivers again, but her words are soft and the press of her lips gentle. Bucky tips his head back, searching her face in the starlight, uncertain of what he'll find.

She lifts her head as he moves his, and smiles at him. "I could get used to the long hair," she says, gently teasing.

"How do you feel?"

"If you like it," he starts, and trails off there, not sure where to go.

Nor does he know how to answer her question. He struggles with it visibly for a few seconds. "I ... it's. Been. I don't -- it's a lot," he settles on, finally. "Not - not bad. Good."

"It definitely is a lot. For all of us." She reaches to tuck a wayward lock of his hair off of his temple, fingers gentle. "I don't want to overwhelm you."

Maybe it would be best to just sit and look at the stars for a while, until he's ready to go back in. "Are you tired at all?"

"You aren't. You haven't," he tries to reassure her, only to give the smallest shrug of his right shoulder in response to her question.

"I don't need much sleep."

"But you still need some."

So does she, but she can take a nap tomorrow during the day, if she has to. Somehow she doubts that's something he's likely to do. "Sit with me a little longer before we go back inside? And then, would you try to sleep a little, for me and Steve?"

"As long as you want." It's soft, but certain - more certain by far than the way his glance slips to the side at her second request. "I'll try."

"Don't let me keep you out here all night," she teases, gently. "I don't want to let you go."

"Then don't. Let go, I mean," he whispers, before he makes himself add, "But you need sleep, too."

It was always a problem then, too. Only a few times did she ever convince him to let her stay for even part of the night, and never did they manage to get a whole night together, where they didn't have to let go of one another until morning.

"Then I'll try, too," she promises. "In a little bit."

"Okay." He still has his arm around her waist, he realizes. As the thought strikes him he shifts a little, turning his left side slightly away but coaxing her to rest her head on his right shoulder if she wants, as he'd been doing with her before.

She unwinds her arms from around him and shifts onto her hip, settling her head there in the curve of his shoulder, where it had always fit so perfectly. Her left arm she puts around the small of his back, holding on.

"I liked watching the stars so much with you that you got me that little lamp," she murmurs. "I still light it. Almost every night."

"I saw you looking at it." He looks out at the sky so that he doesn't have to see her reaction as he explains. "That night. I couldn't figure out why. So I went back, after."

"I can see how it would be confusing, without any memories."

He looks up at the sky, and she looks at him, rolling her head on his shoulder to do so. "Those nights back at the camp, and then at the base, and then the last two years... that lamp always made me feel a little better, even though I was sleeping alone."

He winces at that, just a little. "I'm sorry I stole it. I didn't mean to. Or I don't think I did, exactly."

"I got it back. It's okay, Bucky."

Or as okay as any of this can be, at least.

He looks down at her. "It's not okay, but it's good you have it back." It's lucky that the little ceramic is strong and had been protected enough where he'd stashed it so as not to have broken in the fight.

"Having it back is definitely good."

She leans her head back again, against his shoulder, so she can look at the sky. "I'm glad Aunt Peggy kept it for me, all those years."

"She said she gave you my letter," he murmurs. "I guess she gave you other things too."

"Well, she kept them aside for me," Sharon tells him. "Here, actually. In a piece of her old furniture, up in the attic. Steve and I came down to find them after, after I came back."

"Oh." He considers that for several seconds. "What else did she keep?"

"The lamp," she tells him, thinking back.

"Howard's files. Letters. My old clothes." She smiles, a little. "The hairclips you got me for Christmas."

He flinches violently at the mention of Howard Stark, and hastily attempts to distract from what he knows, despairing, is an all-too-obvious reaction.

"Hairclips," he says. "Do you - do you still wear them?"

She shifts and frowns as he flinches away from her. "Yes," she says. "Bucky, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he says, instantly. "I'm fine. Sorry."

He doesn't seem fine. Something she'd said spooked him, and she isn't sure which part it was.

"It's okay if you aren't, you know," she murmurs. "We can talk about it."

He shakes his head. The last thing - well, almost the last thing - that he wants to do is to tell her how he murdered their friend and his wife, and why.

"Okay," she murmurs. "Okay, Bucky. I'll leave it alone."

It goes against every professional instinct, but she can do it. She wishes, for a moment, that she'd ever been someone who was good with delicate things, but she hasn't been. She can only hope her desperate need to keep from fucking this up will be enough.

A tension he hadn't been aware of holding seeps out of him. "Thank you," he murmurs, soft.

They'll have to talk about it at some point. He knows that. He can't keep this secret forever.

But not now.

"No problem."

She settles back against his side, breathing him in, feeling the tension ease out of him. "She'd also kept that drawing Steve did of us," she murmurs, after a moment. "Do you remember that?"

He's silent for a few moments, thinking hard, trying to coax a fragment of memory into view, then startles a little as an image flits across his mind's eye.

"Not the portrait," he says, slowly. "The other one. At - we were, we were together in it?"

"Right. The one of both of us, at the pub."

The portrait, he'd sent to his sisters... but she can't bear to bring them up right now, for him to live their loss all over again. "It's here."

He looks toward the house, as if it might suddenly appear out of thin air, then back down at her.

"I thought everything was gone."

"Some things are," she admits, softly. "But not everything. Aunt Peggy kept what she could. And now I keep them."

"What you have is probably all that's left. Except for whatever of Steve's stuff is in the museum."

He draws her a little more closely against his side without even thinking about it.

"Right."

He'd mentioned that, but it had gotten lost in the confusion shortly thereafter. "You went and saw the exhibit."

Edited 2023-05-26 02:36 (UTC)

He nods, the small movement sending a couple of locks of his hair drifting over hers. "Before I went to see Peggy. Yes."

"That must have been pretty weird," she murmurs, and tips her head to look up at him, puffs of her breath warm against his throat and jaw. "Steve's gone a couple of times, too."

A faint shiver runs through him as he nods again before looking back down at her.

"There was so much I didn't know. Didn't remember." He swallows. "It was like - it was like reading about someone else."

"Even Steve kind of feels that way, and he remembers it all," she tells him.

The museum really isn't happy that he'd taken back the uniform, but considering it was his fight with the Winter Soldier that wrecked it, she decides against bringing that up here and now. "Maybe some if it will jog some memories."

“It’s why I went to see Peggy.” He sighs, slow and deep.

“I don’t know how to explain. My memory, I mean.”

She watches him, her head on his shoulder, and runs her hand over his back and side in an attempt to soothe.

"It seems like you're getting bits and pieces."

He nods, then shakes his head. He is, but that’s not quite right, he realizes. “It’s all there. Or I think it is. Somewhere.”

There’s misery in his voice as he looks down at her. “I remember everything. Or will. Eventually.”

And if that isn’t a nightmare all by itself he doesn’t know what is. Bucky makes himself continue rather than dwell on that. “But it… it’s like I dropped a puzzle on the floor. Or a mirror, with all the pieces picked up and shoved back into my head without any… nothing’s connected. I can’t - I can’t find things in there. It’s just… bits and pieces.”

"Hey." She lifts her head to look at him, gripping his shirt to give him a little shake. "If it's there, then you'll be able to find it eventually. Don't push it too hard."

She gives him a small smile. "It's only been a few days."

A lot’s happened in that few days. He knows it, she knows it. He doesn’t point it out, deliberately avoiding thinking about it for the moment.

He lets out another slow breath, and nods again.

She leans forward to press her forehead against his temple. "We'll help you put the puzzle back together," she murmurs. "As much as we can."

He tilts his head slightly, into her touch, and selfishly lets himself drown in her for a moment before he whispers,

"Don't let me hurt you again."

There's no way to respond to that which wouldn't either be a lie or make him feel guilty. Sharon elects to not say anything at all, instead putting her arms back around his neck to hold him close.

The faintest whir of metal shifting floats on the air as he braces his left hand flat against the ground and turns just slightly further into her embrace, curving his right hand against her side just above her hip.

He puts his arm around her and draws her in, and she makes a small sound before burying her face in his shoulder and neck. "Bucky."

"I'm here," he murmurs, as gently as he can. He lowers his face to her hair and lets himself just breathe her in for a moment.

"I'm here."

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I shouldn't – I don't want to push you. But I just want to be close to you."

"Don't be. You're not," he reassures her. "Whatever you want."

She isn't sure whatever she wants is actually attainable. She wants to hold him and be held in return, to kiss him, to fall asleep in his arms the way she was denied for so long.

But he's right, too, that he's no longer that man. And she can't expect him to feel the way he once did. Or herself, for that matter. "This is nice."

"Yes." Soft, but certain, as his breath stirs her hair. He holds her close and holds himself still, determined to do nothing that might startle or alarm her.

She doesn't want to push him, she'd said. He can't imagine how she would, really, even as flickers of memory stir - the two of them seated together under another tree, somewhere far from here, teasing and laughter.

Edited 2023-05-26 16:17 (UTC)

She curves a hand at the back of his head, surprised all over again not to feel his shorter hair beneath his fingers.

"You watched over me the other night, didn't you?" she says, low. "At my apartment. Until I left."

He nods, very slightly, causing his hair to move over her hand. "I - it was important. That you be safe."

Bucky hesitates, trying to figure out how to ask. "The redheaded woman. Natasha. She's a friend of yours?"

"A good friend," she confirms.

Part of her wishes Nat were here. This is her life and her past, too.

"Okay. Good." Very, very softly. "It was in the brief, but I ... wasn't sure."

"The brief?"

She leans back to look at him before it clicks. "Right. They must have given you information on the... targets."

"And you," he clarifies. There's misery in his eyes, but he doesn't avoid her gaze. "You... challenged Command. Pierce. About Steve."

"Mm. Yeah."

It's almost a shame Fury had killed Pierce. She'd so dearly have liked to punch him in the face. "He didn't like that much."

"I guess not. But it made him think you might be useful in locating the target. Targets. So... a brief."

He draws a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry."

"That's on Pierce, not you."

She strokes her hand over his hair, trying to soothe him. "I'm fine. Steve's fine. Nat's fine. We're all okay, Bucky."

A little worse for wear, maybe, but alive.

"It was so close," he whispers. "Too close." He holds still as she pets him, unable to believe how forgiving she is.

"I know. I know it was."

She leans her forehead against his, feeling his breath, his warmth. "Try not to think about it."

A disbelieving breath escapes him, but he accedes to her request all the same. "I'll try."

After a second, he adds, "It's hard. But I'll try."

"I know, darling."

The old endearment rolls off her tongue without any thought behind it. "At least try not to dwell on it."

"I'll try," he murmurs again, and curls his arm a little more tightly around her.

Her own arms tighten around his neck. She's very nearly in his lap by now, and he hasn't pushed her away – but she's not sure he could, even if he wanted to. Or if he could even want to.

But he holds her more closely, which she thinks he'd be unlikely to do if he didn't want her so near, so she allows herself to shift even closer to him. "Okay."

She's warm and vibrant and alive against him, and as she tightens her embrace he spreads his fingers over her hip.

"Are you comfortable enough?" he murmurs, meaning it in multiple ways.

"I could be more comfortable, but I'd either have to let you go or be on top of you to make it happen," she teases. "Are you?"

"You can be. If you want." He tilts his head a little to the side, watching her intently.

"Wouldn't that fall under pushing for too much?"

It's an honest question, and she leans back enough to watch him with a steady gaze. "I don't want you to feel like I'm, I'm expecting you to act the way you used to."

He takes the time to think over her question carefully, aware that she's watching for his reaction but also aware that her concern is an important one.

"I don't think so," he murmurs. "I don't... it's not, you're not - I'm not uncomfortable," he settles on. "I know I don't, I'm not - not acting the same way as I would have, as I must have, but I'm ... I'm not trying to?"

She studies him for a long moment, then nods. "Let me know if you're uncomfortable," she tells him, and shifts with a lithe motion to curl into his lap, the way she used to often before.

"Okay," he promises, even as a surge of sensation flashes through him, along with a sudden sense of familiarity for no reason he can adequately explain. He wraps his right arm a little more tightly around her, supporting her against him.

She leans her head against his shoulder and focuses on feeling him breathe, on his arm around her.

"We sat like this a lot," she murmurs. "I never wanted to let you go then, either."

"In the field?" he asks, but then, before she can answer -- "In the field." Certainty threads through his words. "The one where you landed."

"In the field," she confirms. "Exactly."

He nods, then turns his face back into her hair, breathing slowly. "It's been-- I'm not used to it. This," he tries to explain.

"We don't have to," she says, quiet. "If it's too weird."

"No!" It comes out too quickly, almost desperate, before he can stop himself. "No," he tries again, softer. "That's not - that's not what I meant."

"Okay."

She curves a hand at the side of his throat, cupping his jaw. "Okay."

"Sorry," he says, yet again, and tries not to let self-loathing rise up to swamp him. "Sorry. It's just - do you want me to explain?"

He's honestly not sure.

"If you can, yeah."

Who knows where the boundaries are? He certainly doesn't seem to.

“Okay.” He takes a second to think about it. She needs to understand, given that she’s worried about pushing him, but if he can manage that without inspiring pity or disgust, well… that would be better than the alternative by far.

“They made me a weapon,” he says, after that brief silence. “A - a tool. A thing. The asset. Not - not human. That has… effects. Not just on me. Not exactly.”

She shakes her head at him, not understanding. "What do you mean, not just on you?"

"People treated me as that," he says, softly. "Nothing more." With one exception that he doesn't know how to explain, or even if he should.

He looks up at the sky again, trying to find something to hold on to in the stars, unwilling to see the look in her eyes change as he explains. "No conversation other than mission parameters. No touch. Nothing that wasn't medical or experimental or for the program or the mission."

It's a special kind of hell to put a man as charming and friendly as Bucky had been through. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I can see why you're not used to it."

"So you're not - you're not pushing. It's not - I don't mind, I don't, I-- but you shouldn't have to feel like you have to, or, or--"

He's making a mess of this, and he can't seem to stop the words from pouring out of his mouth with no coherence or sense to them.

"I don't feel like I have to," she promises. "Bucky, do you have any idea how much I wanted to be held by you even just one more time?"

His rambling explanation cuts off as though sliced with a knife. Bucky looks down at her, eyes wide and wondering.

Carefully, he tightens his right arm around her as he searches her face to be sure.

"I lost you." Her gaze stays steady on his face, though a little desperation cracks in her voice. "I was never going to touch you again, or see you again."

She takes a deep breath. "And the best way for me to erase those memories of when you came for me is to replace them with memories of better touches."

"I'm here," he whispers. The way her voice shifts tears at him. "I'm here, Sharon."

He doesn't raise his left hand, thinking it'd be cruel to subject her to that, but he can run his right hand lightly back and forth over her side and try to comfort her that way, so he does.

"I'm so glad you are," she whispers. "Just let me hold onto you for a while, Bucky."

"As long as you want."

Carefully, he curves his right arm a little further around her, tucking her a little closer against him.

She curls against him the way she used to – and not even quite like that. It was rare that they held onto each other just for comfort and support, without passion feeding into the mix.

After a moment, she glances up at him. "Can you not feel me through your left arm?"

He goes very, very still. "I thought - you shouldn't have to be subjected to, to that."

Again. He strives to keep his tone matter-of-fact without making it empty.

"It doesn't - it doesn't have nerves." Pain would interfere with operation, after all. "Just pressure sensors, some haptic feedback to identify damage and contact intensity, that kind of thing."

"I'm not scared of your arm."

As much as she hates that he'd lost his original left arm, as much as she misses having both his arms around her, as much as that arm is a symbol of the evil men who kept him hidden away for so long –

It's not the arm that worries her.

He doesn't know what to say to that. After a moment, he lifts his left hand from where he'd still had it planted against the ground and turns it palm-up in front of her for her perusal.

She slips her left hand beneath his and curves her palm and finger against the cool metal of his hand, then runs her finger tips over his palm.

"It looks heavy."

"It is. Some sort of titanium-steel alloy, I think." He holds his hand still for her exploration with no sign of difficulty or sensitivity.

She nods, and lifts his hand to place a kiss to his metal palm. "I'm sorry about your arm," she murmurs, as she lowers his hand again.

The gentleness of her gesture nearly undoes him. His hand hangs in the air for a second or two in an agony of indecision before he carefully places it beside her leg, on his own - just to be sure.

"It was ... strange ... waking up with it the first time," he murmurs. For a number of reasons. "But I'm pretty much used to it now, I guess."

"I bet." He walks a little differently, she'd noticed. It must have something to do with the weight of his arm, the not-quite-natural feeling in it. "Does it hurt?"

He looks down at his arm as if he might find the answer there. "I don't really notice it any more."

Whether he means the arm or the pain – and she thinks he means the pain – it's an answer that makes her stomach clench in sympathy. She reaches to set her palm at the place where the metal joins his shoulder and chest. "I wish you hadn't had to get to that point."

Confused nerves fire at the light pressure along the interface between metal and flesh, dimming and flashing through and around thickened scar tissue. He doesn't react; he's felt this kind of thing before, and her touch is a lot gentler than what he's become accustomed to.

"Better than the alternative, probably." He sounds a little wry, but can't really help it. "The first connections weren't great. I tried tearing it off, but obviously that wasn't allowed."

"Obviously," she agrees, wry, and smooths her hand over his metal shoulder. God, the things they did to him, to her beautiful Bucky, so full of life and hope...

"I guess it's probably pretty strong, too."

"Yeah. It is." He watches as her hand brushes over him, wishing he could feel it the way he could if it were his other arm.

As long as he doesn't say it, he can think it, he realizes. Or at least mostly; the side effects are well within tolerance. Good.

"It has an override enhancement, too. Gives me more force in ... certain applications."

"Mm." They'd certainly done their best to make him as effective and terrifying as possible. She runs her hand down the metal curves and rests her palm on his forearm, then settles her head and shoulder back against him once more. "Thanks for sitting with me."

"I should be thanking you," he points out, softly. He leans his head against hers.

"Then you're welcome."

She wonders what time it is. Her eyes are heavy and she has that muffling, fatigued feeling of very late night tugging down on her bones, but what if she lets go and it turns out this was just a dream?

For now, she closes her eyes and breathes him in, trying to wrap her mind around all the differences, trying to remind herself that things aren't the same. Even though his arm around her feels just as sweet as it always did.

She settles a little more comfortably against him, breathing deeply, and he holds her close and lets himself just be present in the moment, here with her.

It's not until she blinks herself awake from a light doze that she realizes she's drifting. Like it or not, she needs to sleep... and so does he. "We should probably go back inside."

"Probably," he agrees, and raises his head from her hair. She needs rest. "Let me help you up?"

"Yeah, okay."

She puts her hands down to shift herself, her legs a little asleep from sitting this way for so long.

"Hold on." He cradles her against his chest with his right arm around her back, then slips his left under her legs as she shifts. He rocks forward and rises to his feet in one smooth motion, carrying her with him as he stands.

One second, she's relaxed against him, and the next –

duct tape over her mouth, rope around her wrists, he's carrying her into the bedroom and dumping her onto the bed to wrap her in her comforter

– she gasps and stiffens, then shoves the reaction down as far as she can. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

He freezes, going absolutely still, then bends down and lowers his left arm to set her on her feet. As soon as she's standing, he takes a long step back, then a second.

"My fault," he whispers, barely audible. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's not, it's – "

She swallows hard against the sick swell of memory. She can almost feel the binding around her ankles. "I'll get over it. I promise."

"It is." It's all he can do to control the fierceness in his tone, trying not to alarm or upset her further. "It's not your fault. It's not. I did this to you. And I didn't even think."

"You shouldn't have had to, I always loved it when you picked me up and carried me around."

And she will again. She will. "I'll be damned if I let HYDRA take that from me, too."

He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to hide the pain in his own. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, helpless to do anything but.

"Bucky, no." She can't hear the agony in his whisper and ignore the flash of it in his eyes before he closes them and not move, not go to him. She comes forward and cradles his head in her hands. "It's going to be okay."

He's aware when she moves, due to the shift of air around her and the whisper of her clothing, but he still nearly startles backward when she takes his face in her hands. He opens his eyes, surprised, and stares at her.

"Will it?"

"Yes. And you want to know why?"

She doesn't let go, only looks up into his face with her own gaze steady and determined. "Because you and I will make it be okay. And Steve is the most stubborn man alive, but I can match him any day for sheer bullheadedness. And I refuse to imagine a world where we don't get through this."

She lifts her eyebrows at him, expectant. "Okay?"

He searches her face, and although he couldn't explain what he sees there, it causes some of the tension in his body to fade.

"Okay," he says, soft but clear. "I believe you."

"Okay," she murmurs, and gives him a small smile. "We'll work on the carrying thing. But for now, I think we both need some sleep."

"You're probably right about that." He's sure she is about herself, anyway, and he should at least try.

Bucky shifts a little, prepared to move to her side and walk her back.

She waits until he's come to her side, then slips her hand into the crook of his elbow, where she's rested it so many times before. "All I know is that if we don't try, Steve will be disappointed in both of us in the morning."

The corner of his mouth twitches a little. "We can't have that."

Bucky bends down enough to snag his jacket from the ground and carries it loosely in his other hand as he starts to walk with her back toward the house.

She wonders if Steve's been asleep this whole time, or if he's just decided to give them a few moments alone. Or... an hour, or however long it's been. Either way, she's careful to open the door as quietly as possible before heading with Bucky back inside.

He drapes the jacket over the back of a kitchen chair as they pass through and leaves it there to dry, then walks with her up the stairs, moving as silently as possible.

If Steve's still asleep, he doesn't want to wake him.

When they reach the door of the guest room where Bucky had been staying, she draws to a halt with him and looks up into his face.

"Please try to get some sleep," she murmurs. "And I will, too."

"I'll try." It's all he can commit to. Maybe if nothing else he can curl up in the corner and doze.

"Sleep well, Sharon."

"You too."

There's a second where she considers, before she lifts up to kiss his cheek. "Goodnight, Bucky."

As she goes back down from her tiptoes, he lifts his right hand - slowly, deliberately, so that she can see and won't be surprised.

Bucky brushes her hair back over her shoulder, cups his hand over the nape of her neck, and hesitates there, studying her.

His fingers brush over her skin, through her hair, and she shivers again but doesn't pull away. Instead, she breathes, and gives him a small smile as her own hands go to his sides.

He leans down, maybe testing her, maybe testing himself, and presses a light, gentle kiss to her lips.

She breathes in, sharp, as her heart stutters, and then her hands firm at his sides and she pushes up to kiss him back, sweet and wanting, as everything she's feeling rolls over her in a wave.

He'd meant it as a benison, or at least he thinks he had, right before he stops thinking at all.

Bucky falls into the kiss and lingers there, drowning in her.

His lips, his breath, the feel of his hand at the nape of her neck; it all transports her two years and seven decades ago, back to that very last morning, back to the night before. As if she could go back in time and stop him from going on that mission, her hands come up, cradle his head, her fingers threading through his hair as she kisses him again. Her heart is hammering so hard she's dizzy with it, trembling from the force of everything she's feeling, everything she's holding back.

"Sharon," he whispers between kisses, overwhelmed and humbled by her trust, her emotion. "Sharon."

Bucky tips his head forward when the next kiss breaks, resting his forehead against hers.

"Bucky." He breaks their kisses and everything in her cries out for more, for him, for everything she's been missing and mourning for two years. She runs her fingers through his hair and cradles his head again, trying to catch her breath.

It's made that much harder by the way her chest is cracking open and her heart is aching.

His breath shudders in as a shiver runs through him, but manages not to move either toward her or away. "Sharon."

"I loved you more than I've ever loved anyone." It comes spilling out of her like she's lancing a wound, as her fingers shiver in his hair and she tries to catch her own shaking breath. "I still love you. And I know you don't – you don't remember, and things are all in pieces. I'm not telling you because I need you to – expect you to – feel the way you used to, okay?"

She breathes deep and looks at him, her forehead still pressed against his. "I'm giving it to you. It's yours. No matter what else happens or doesn't happen. Just – I just want you to know that. And I won't give up on you."

Her confession washes over him like a tidal wave, knocking every support loose and leaving him spinning, at a momentary loss for words.

"Angel." His whisper is barely audible, raw in his throat. "I don't deserve you."

"That is not true." She swallows hard, shaking her head. "It's not true. And don't put me up on a pedestal, Bucky, I've got clay feet like anyone else. But you, you deserve so much more than what the world gave you, baby, I'm so sorry. I wanted you to have a good life, a whole life, even if it was without me."

She blinks hard, the grief and pain and guilt and regret of two years rising up in her chest. "I'm so mad that was stolen from you. I'm going to do everything I can to try and get even a fraction of it back for you."

This time he does move, desperately afraid that he'll do something wrong and set her spiraling again, but he can't not try. He takes a small step forward, just enough to wrap both arms gently around her and draw her into his embrace.

"You already did," he breathes.

She puts her arms around him and presses her forehead into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

"Then I'm going to get you more," she murmurs. "Fucking watch me, Barnes."

"I believe you." He does, and it gives him cause to worry about her and Steve both, but that's something best dealt with in the clear light of day. For now, he holds her close.

"Good." Her fingers grip into his shirt, but she has to try to let go. For his sake. For her sake. Doesn't she?

"Weren't we saying goodnight?"

"We were." He presses a gentle kiss to her hair, then pulls back and looks down at her. "You need sleep."

"I know."

Stay with me batters at the back of her teeth, but she swallows it. He needs sleep, too, and if he couldn't even manage it with Steve in the room, she doubts he could with her there.

They'll have time. She has to believe that. Whatever it brings. She breathes deep and just a little shaky and looks back up at him. "Then goodnight. Again."

"Good night," he murmurs. "Again. Get some rest, angel."

He loosens his hold enough that she can step away from him, but doesn't move.

Angel shivers through her, sweet and wistful, and she takes a deep breath. "You too, sweetheart."

She can't resist, leans up to give him one last gentle kiss, then steps away before either of them can lose themselves in it again. "I'll see you in the morning."

"See you in the morning," he murmurs, and finally takes a step back toward the door of the room he's borrowed. He makes himself go inside and close the door, then leans against it and stares into space, trying to absorb everything this day's held.

Her room feels strange, too small and too large and too silent all at once, and it's all she can do to keep from going back down the hall to knock on Bucky's door.

Instead, she lights the little lamp and takes off her robe, then gets back into bed and turns onto her side to look at his picture, smiling back at her. "Good night," she murmurs, again, before rolling over and doing her best to sleep.

He'd promised to try to sleep, and so he does, lying down on the bed and staring at the ceiling above him with his mind an incoherent whirl until his eyes close. He jerks awake no more than an hour or so later, cold sweat breaking out all over his body as he bites back a scream.

Bucky quits the bed for the corner, where he can sit on the floor with his back to the wall, arms around his knees, and stare up at the night sky through the window. He counts the stars visible through the glass over and over until the first light of false dawn spreads through the dark.

Good enough. He sneaks out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen. Making coffee will give him something to do.

Sleep had been all but impossible with his kiss still burning on her lips, and the number of times she'd almost gone to knock quietly on his door must have numbered in the double digits. But she had slept, finally, still exhausted from the fight and the stress of everything that happened in DC. She's not a supersoldier, there's only so much she can push through.

But she wakes early with the sun, and with the scent of coffee lifting from the kitchen. Sharon gets up and dresses in some comfortable workout clothes, then ties her hair into a ponytail and heads downstairs, barefoot.

Just seeing him there is like a dream come true... no matter how nightmarish the rest of this is. She can't stop the way her eyes shine or how she smiles when she comes into the kitchen and sees him. "Good morning."

"Good morning." He trades contemplating the slow curl of steam from his mug for watching her approach instead. "You're up early."

"So are you." She goes to the cabinet and takes down a mug, then starts fixing herself a cup of coffee.

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Some." An hour counts, as far as he's concerned. "You?"

The corner of his mouth twitches in the faintest ghost of a smile. "Looks like Steve's still down for the count."

"Let's let him sleep in a bit." He needs it as much as anyone does, and it's not like they have plans for the day.

Not really, anyway. Sharon adds cream and sugar to her coffee, reaches into the spice drawer for the cinnamon and adds a shake of that, too, then comes to the island, sipping at her mug. "I was thinking of taking a walk this morning. I'd like some company, if you're up for it."

He blinks at the cinnamon even as he takes unconscious, silent note of her preferences.

"Okay." She's dressed for a run, in contrast to his simple combination of jeans, boots, and long-sleeved shirt, which prompts him to ask, "Do I need to change?"

"Not unless you feel like wearing something lighter in the woods. I think there might be some of Steve's things somewhere from last summer you could borrow."

Not that they managed to get out here that often, but occasionally she'd do her best to steal him away.

He makes a soft noise of acknowledgement, although not assent, and takes a sip of his coffee, studying her over the rim of the mug.

"Last summer?"

"Dragged him out here for a couple of days between missions." She slides onto a stool and lifts her eyebrows at him in a you know what I mean expression.

"He's just as allergic to taking time off as ever. Practically had to drag him by the ear."

He nods. "I bet it helped. Both of you." He sounds like he's working something out, one step at a time.

"It always helps to come here." She takes another sip, then wraps her fingers around the mug and sets it down as she looks over at him.

"I used to dream about you coming here. I'd wake up, and there you'd be, and I'd get to show you all my favorite places and things."

He can put the pieces together. She used to dream of this, and now he's here, and she's asking him to go for a walk with her. Bucky tries to steel himself for the way he's inevitably going to hurt her again when he fails to live up to her dream.

"It's a nice place," he murmurs.

"Yeah."

She can't take her eyes off him, though. He looks tired, lined, sad in a way she never saw him be before. He's been through so much, and he's changed so much, but it's still him. "I can't believe it's really you."

"Whoever that is," he murmurs. "Whoever I am now."

Bucky shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

Sharon lets go of the mug with one hand, reaching out to curl her fingers around his. "We'll find out," she promises. "Together."

He squeezes her fingers, very gently, and doesn't respond to that directly.

"When do you and Steve need to report in?"

Sharon shakes her head at him. "With who, Fury? SHIELD doesn't exist anymore. There's no one for me to check in with."

Sometime soon, she'll need to think about what that means for her, where she'll go next. "Steve's got the Avengers, but I'm currently a free agent."

He opens his mouth, trying to find the right words, then shakes his head as if to make his thoughts function.

"To anyone, I guess I meant. Personal or professional."

Sharon huffs a wry breath, letting go of his hand and taking another sip of her coffee. "Bucky, the only time I've had a personal life in the last eight years are those months I spent with you and the Howling Commandos. Every friend I've got is someone I work with. You want to know what personal connections I've got?"

She waves a hand around the kitchen, empty except for the two of them. "You're looking at them."

His eyes narrow, and he points in the direction of the stairs to the room where Steve's sleeping.

Sharon chuckles and nods, acknowledging. "Yeah, Steve, too. Although he's been as much job as personal life this last year."

"Your... assignment." He's pretty sure he remembers that.

"Yeah. Only Fury and the Avengers knew we knew each other." She takes another swallow of coffee and gets up to top herself off.

"So it was perfect. Steve could have protection he knew and trusted, but I'd still fly under the radar."

He leans over to the spice drawer and pulls out the cinnamon, setting it on the counter in easy reach of her without comment.

"Why did he need protection?"

"He's Captain America." Which should mean he doesn't need protection at all, but that's not how national treasures work. "SHIELD wanted to make sure no one messed with him."

She sighs as she sits back down with her refreshed mug. "Honestly, probably a bunch of it was Pierce wanting to keep an eye on him. I reported to him when Fury was unavailable."

"Probably." His jaw works for a moment. "Given STRIKE."

"Yeah." She watches him a moment, then reaches again, this time curling her fingers over his forearm.

"I kept a good eye on him, Bucky. And I fudged the reports. Pierce never knew more than ten percent of what was going on with Steve."

He looks up at her, meeting her eyes with a bleak but determined gaze.

"I don't doubt that. Or you. Ever."

"Good." She smiles over at him, small but warm.

"We promised we'd keep an eye out for each other, when I got back. For you. And we have."

"I thought the two of you were together. Before I ... before Steve woke me up." He says it as a matter of fact, as though it were the only thing that made sense.

"I'd have been happy for you. If you were. Just so you know."

It's not exactly a huge surprise, and she doesn't think it would be to Steve, either. And... she'd be a liar if she said she'd never thought about it. Even Nat had thought there was something there, and she's got almost as good an eye as Clint.

Sharon shakes her head, her ponytail flipping against the back of her neck. "I know you would have," she murmurs. "But we weren't. We aren't. I do love him, Bucky, but it's never been like that with us. He's been my best friend for these last two years, ever since I got back. We needed each other."

"He's a good one." He finishes the last swallow of coffee in his mug and sets it on the counter, uncertain what else to do with it. "I'm glad you had each other. That you weren't alone. Either of you."

"He's the best," she agrees. "But he wasn't you."

And maybe Bucky isn't that man anymore, either, but none of them have any idea what might happen with him now that he isn't regularly getting his brain scrambled or being forced into cryostasis. She doesn't know if they can ever be what they were to each other again, but those feelings never died, they were just lying dormant without him.

He absorbs that in silence for a few seconds. Finally, very low - so low as to be barely audible, he says:

"I don't know what to do."

She shakes her head again, breathing out long and rushed.

"Neither do I."

Maybe no one would know. Who could? There's no manual for this, no mission objective, no set of orders to follow.

Bucky makes himself draw a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then takes the next mental step toward a new, uncertain future.

"You said you wanted to go for a walk?"

"Yeah."

She gets up with her coffee, goes to rummage in a drawer for some paper and a pencil. "We can leave Steve a note."

He nods. "Do you need to eat something first?"

"When we get back." She's fallen out of regular mealtimes since coming back to her own time, but the coffee will be enough for now. "Do you need some breakfast?"

He shakes his head. "When we get back," he echoes, and cranes his neck a little to watch her write.

She shifts so he can see clearly — Steve, went for a walk with B. Back by 9, waffles in the freezer — then sets the note by the coffee pot and puts her mug in the sink.

"Let me just get my sneakers on and we can get going."

Edited 2024-05-10 01:40 (UTC)

"Okay." As she moves away from sink he steps in, bringing his own mug with him. Bucky reaches for dish soap and cloth and starts to wash up their mugs while she's finding her shoes.

"Thanks," she calls over her shoulder, as she tugs on socks and shoes and slips her phone into her pocket. She waits for him to finish, then smiles.

"Ready?"

"Ready." He makes note of the time as he moves to her side. They'd better not be back late, or Steve'll worry. He thinks. Probably.

After a moment, he thinks to ask, "Where are we going?"

"Around the property," she tells him, leading him out the door and into the cool bright morning. The air smells so fresh, here.

"There are these old caves I used to prowl around when I was a kid... I used to pretend there was treasure hidden there."

He frowns hard at that, fighting to tease out a muzzy recollection from the glass-sharp shards of his memory.

"You told me about that once. Didn't you? Your... your father was involved somehow? Maybe?"

She looks over at him, tucking back the strands of her hair that tug loose from her ponytail in the breeze. "Yeah. I wasn't sure if you'd remember. Pirate maps and treasure."

"I might not have, without you mentioning it. It's all--" He gestures at his temple with his right hand.

"-- mixed up in there. Hard to untangle. But there are... threads, I guess. Trails to follow. I don't know if that makes any sense."

"It does, I think."

Even with everything, it's beyond sweet to be able to walk with him into the woods around the house. "Considering everything. But that's good, Bucky. We can work with threads."

"I'm sorry I can't tell you. How to fix it. How to fix me." He glances over at her. "I would if I could. If I knew how."

"I know, baby."

It comes slipping off her tongue just like it did last night, easy and thoughtless. "We'll figure it out. Steve and I are gonna help you, however we can."

"I know." He says it very softly, almost inaudible. About that he has no doubt; if he stays, if he lets them, they'll break themselves trying to repair him.

Bucky keeps easy pace beside her and lets the whirlwind of confusion and more in his mind just wash through him.

They walk for a while, quiet, in the woods, before she looks up at the dappled light through the leaves. "I always liked it here," she murmurs.

"And when you and I would go for walks around the camp, sometimes I could almost imagine we were here instead."

"You must have missed it." She's right; it's a nice place. Peaceful. "I'm glad you're here now."

In more than one way, although he probably shouldn't be.

"Yeah, I did. And I would have missed it a lot if I'd never come back."

She looks back over at him, taking in the profile she's missed so much. His hair is so long now, but she can remember the way it used to be, brushed over his forehead in that little wave. "But I was happy anyway, with you."

"I should have listened to you. When you warned me." He picks his way carefully over the landscape, moving in near silence through long habit.

Sharon shakes her head, frowning at him. "You did listen," she points out. "We talked it all over, Bucky. None of this is your fault."

He gives a very small shrug. It's somehow evident that he's not sure she's right about that, although he doesn't say anything.

All she can think of now is that letter he wrote, how she'd cried after reading it, all those promises to try and come back to her. "I know you did everything you could. I know how hard you tried. I read your letter."

He nods. "Peggy saved it for you, you said." He scans the area around them for threats, automatically, then glances over at her.

"I apologized. In hers."

"Apologized?"

As if there were anything he needed to apologize for, to them. "What for?"

"Not coming back," he says. "Breaking your heart. Hurting Steve. I knew you'd both be devastated."

He'd known it the way he'd known the sun would rise in the east. "So I apologized. Asked her to look out for you two. And then she lost you both."

"You didn't do that to her. You didn't do that to any of us." He's determined to hold onto the guilt, and she's just as determined to pry it out of his hands.

"Bucky, we lost you. You didn't leave us."

"I didn't mean to. I tried. But I wasn't good enough. Strong enough." He glances over at her again.

"Maybe I didn't do that. But I did a lot of other things."

She meets that glance with her own steady one and lifts her eyebrows at him, a little of the practical Agent Thirteen back in her expression. "Well, none of that's what we're talking about right now, so quit moving goalposts."

He studies her face for a second, and something about the look on his own eases for a moment. "Okay."

A single beat of silence. "What are we talking about?"

"I was telling you how nice it was to go walking with you back then." She quirks a smile at him, then tips her head at a clearing up ahead.

"And I was about to say: we're here."

He shifts slightly to step into the clearing first, then moves to the side and waits for her.

Bucky looks around with new interest, taking in everything he sees. He's wandered around a lot in the past couple of days, but it's different knowing this place means something to her.

She breathes in, smelling the wet rock and sun-warm grass of the clearing, and goes toward an opening in the rocky slope that's rising away from them.

"They aren't really caves, but when I was little they were close enough. And you can still hang out in them and stay dry when it's raining."

"I bet it looks nice. Watching the rain from in there." He follows her across the grass and peers into the entrance.

"It does." She ducks down and moves into the little entrance, where the air feels several degrees cooler, and hunts out the spot where she used to sit, cross-legged, reading or watching the woods.

"Probably they go pretty far back, but that was a little dangerous to explore, even for me."

He watches her settle before cautiously making his way inside. Bucky starts exploring some of the near reaches of the little cave. “There could have been pirates. Or bears.”

"Either just as likely as the other," she says, amused. "But there's always the potential of a cave-in, or flooding."

He turns away from the wall and looks over his shoulder at her. "Please don't be caught in either."

She lifts her eyebrows at him and shrugs. "I'm not planning to be."

"Good." He trails the fingers of his left hand lightly over a niche in the wall that looks almost as though it could be a shelf, testing its depth in a way that's not likely to get him bitten by a snake or a rat or whatever might live here.

Finding nothing, he leaves it alone and continues his exploration.

She smiles, watching him, tracing her fingers lightly over the stone floor.

"Finding anything worthwhile?"

"Just looking." He finishes making the circuit and comes back to join her. Bucky crouches down on his heels beside her.

"It's a decent place to hide. The stone would interfere with scans."

"That is something I was concerned about at age twelve," she says, straight-faced. "But yeah, you're right. It would block most things."

He slants a sideways look at her. "You could have been precocious. Who am I to assume?"

She smiles at him, cheerful. "Oh, I definitely was. Just not about OPSEC. That was really more a high school thing."

"High school?" A complex look crosses over his face as a flash of memory whips through his mind of Yelena Belova and the other girls in training. "When did you start with SHIELD?"

He hesitates, then shifts from his crouch to sit on the ground, one knee drawn up in a controlled sprawl.

A flash of remorse flickers over her expression for a second before she shakes her head at him. "I was just teasing," she clarifies.

"But I guess Aunt Peggy did pretty much start training me when I was a kid. I just didn't know that's what she was doing."

"I guess since she knew, she wanted to make sure you were ready." It gives him a headache to think about how the present might have influenced the past, which in turn influenced the present - but since it sure doesn't look like anything was changed or broken except him, it's probably nothing to worry about.

"Sorry. I just don't know much about how SHIELD works, when it's not HYDRA." He considers that. "Worked. Maybe."

"It's okay," she murmurs, assuring. "I can tell you about it, if you're interested. It definitely colored my whole life, I can tell you that much."

He nods, and shifts his attention from the world around them to train his gaze on her face.

Her lips quirk as she meets his silent glance. "Is that a request for more information, or do I just have something on my face?"

"Information," he replies, and is silently grateful that the confirmation in answer to her question doesn't activate the conditioning. He's not sure if that's because it's intelligence-gathering or not, but it's something to remember.

"If you're sure you don't mind."

She shakes her head. "I don't mind."

There are some loose pieces of shale nearby; she picks them up to toy with while she speaks. "There's so much I always wanted to tell you and couldn't. Obviously I couldn't say anything about SHIELD, or too much about what I did or what Aunt Peggy was going to do. But I wanted to be like her from as far back as I can remember, and she did her best to make sure I had everything I needed to go just as far as she did, maybe further."

She counts off on her fingers. "Boxing lessons. Jiujitsu training. Rock climbing. Gymnastics. Tutors for languages. She was the one who brought me to a gun range and taught me to shoot and how to handle a weapon, as soon as I was old enough."

He frowns hard as he thinks that over, trying to tease out bits of memories and match them to what she's saying now. "No wonder you - the skills test," he says, finally. "More prepared than anyone would ever have guessed."

His glance follows the play of stone through her hands. "How old were you? When you learned to shoot."

"Most of that was my SHIELD training," she tells him. "But Aunt Peggy made damn sure I had a solid base to build on. I was taking dancing lessons for my parents in high school and martial arts lessons for her at the same time."

At his question, she chuckles, leans back on her hands. "Oh, that was a 'happy birthday, you're a teenager' present. I was thirteen, and she'd made me earn it. She had me practice taking apart and putting back together an unloaded Glock while she quizzed me on gun safety and protocols for three months beforehand until I could do it fast enough for her."

He feels the faintest of smiles pull at the corners of his mouth. "She's a hell of a lady."

"She doesn't do anything by halves," Sharon agrees. "And she was tough. She made me earn it, every step of the way. But she knew I had to be absolutely sure this was what I wanted with my life, and she knew putting me in the field meant I had to be at the absolute top of my game."

The shade of a smile flickers at the corner of her mouth. "Steve didn't test me on a third of what I can do. He knows that now."

"Especially knowing when you were going to end up, for a while." He overcomes the impulse to run his fingers over the stone floor with the habit of long years.

"Did anyone ever figure out how it happened? Either time?"

Either time. Her lashes flutter for a second as she blinks, pushing back the memories of that first awful day, the realization. "We still don't know for sure what brought me there to begin with," she says, quiet, trying to find words to tell him what she has to.

"Stark has some ideas, but they're basically the same as what we thought back then. But I think — Steve said you got hit with a blast from one of those weapons, and I'm pretty sure... I'm pretty sure what happened to you is what triggered me coming back."

He was still before; now he's immobile. Bucky stares at her, eyes wide and dark as he struggles to absorb what she's telling him.

"On the train." His voice sounds rough in his own ears, and for some reason it seems like it's coming from a long way way. "When I - it blew me out the side of the car. That? It - I -- "

Pieces are trying to assemble in his head, but he doesn't like the picture. "The resonance. It - it broke it? It broke it. Breaking it sent you home."

Never in a million years did she think she'd ever have to tell him this. "I think so."

Her voice, in contrast to his, is low and steady. She's holding herself ruthlessly under control. "From what I can tell, it happened at about the same time."

He takes that in and sits with it silence for several long seconds.

When he does finally speak, each word is bitter and filled with self-loathing. "Looks like Howard should have just shot me without that damn wire cage."

It'd have been better for everyone, he's pretty sure.

She shakes her head at him, her eyes dark and sympathetic. "He would never have done that," she murmurs. "And even if he wanted to, we would never have let him. And I— "

She breathes, tries to ground herself. "I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay with you."

It rocks him, visibly so. Bucky shifts just a little, planting both hands flat against the ground, one on either side of him.

It takes him a while to find words. Any words. Even when he does, he's not sure they're the right ones, but in the face of her admission she deserves to know, doesn't she?

"I used to dream about it." Barely a breath, as if saying it any louder is too great a risk. "What it could be like. When the war was over, if. If."

They shouldn't be here, in this cave in the woods. They should be in the field in France, or that little cottage hung with wildflowers. They should be in Brooklyn, talking about a future, instead of here in Virginia, talking about the past.

Sharon swallows, wanting more than anything to reach for him. "Do you remember any of it? What did you picture?"

"Pieces, maybe. It's all ..." He trails off there. She knows that already. Bucky sits quietly for a moment, trying to find more of it.

"I thought - used to think - if you, and if Peggy - brownstones are big. Enough space for all four. Different floors, maybe, to be close without - without living in each other's pockets. But still a home."

Her smile quirks again, trying to picture it. What she comes up with probably isn't much like what he'd been dreaming about back then, but it's still a sweet thought. "I think I probably would have wanted us to have our own space," she says, but she's still smiling.

"But it's a nice thought."

He shrugs. "It was just a dream."

"But it could have been real."

She picks the slate back up again, running her fingers over the edges. "I used to dream about it, too. How we could all join SHIELD when it started... if you wanted to. Or maybe you'd do something else and I'd be able to come back to you every time I went away for a mission."

He tries to imagine what it might have been like, if he'd lived to be the man he used to be. If Steve hadn't gone into the ice. If Sharon hadn't been pulled back through time.

He can't see it. There's nothing but glints of might-have-been with darkness and death and blood and pain over all the years between.

"I guess I blew that up too. I'm sorry."

"You didn't."

Someone did, but it wasn't Bucky. She sighs and tosses the slate away, letting it skitter over the stone floor. "And even coming back here, I couldn't let go of it all. Hell, I bought that little cottage in France. The one in the woods. You filled it with flowers and we had a picnic outside."

Flashes of memory surface as she describes it - sunshine and laughter, a long lazy afternoon together.

"You bought it?"

"Yeah." She smiles at him, a little, her mind half somewhere else. "It was still there. And now it's mine, and I'm never going to let it get torn down."

He wonders if she'll feel the same way a year from now, but recognizes that it's due to the way he feels that everything he touches he destroys.

She looks a little lost in her thoughts, and he hopes they're happier, kinder ones. She deserves that. Bucky just watches her quietly for a few moments.

She blinks out of her memories and looks at him.

"Maybe we could go back, sometime. Walking around that area, seeing some of those places, it could help with your memories."

"Maybe." He doubts it, but he has to admit that he doesn't know, and he's reluctant to quash that hint of hope in her expression.

"It may take a while. I don't know how long. I ... might not know for a couple of weeks at least. It's - I wasn't usually out of cryo longer than that. I think it had something to do with - with keeping me stable. Under control."

Everything he says about what's happened to him over the last seventy years breaks her heart all over again... and makes her almost too furious to see.

Maybe this will be her new work. No more SHIELD? Fine. She can hunt down HYDRA all on her own. "There's no rush," she promises. "We're working without a map, here, so let's see how you feel in a couple of weeks and go from there."

He’s not sure they’ll have that long. These few days are an impossible gift, but he’s under no illusions that the world will wait for long - and it’ll be howling for his blood. Someone has to pay; someone has to be blamed, and he’s the easiest target now that he’s out of the shadows, even if not completely.

“I’ll try,” he says, simply.

"We'll try," she corrects. "It's not just you, Bucky. You have me and Steve back again. We've got you."

Now she does reach for him, for whichever hand he has closest to her, uncaring if it's metal or flesh. "We're not losing you again."

She reaches for his left hand, and he’s pretty sure she’s done it unthinkingly because of the angle at which he’s sitting. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that it’s murderous metal, and that rocks him all over again.

He holds still and lets her take it. It takes him a second to find words, again, still. Maybe it always will, now. It’s been a long, long time since he was expected to talk, or allowed to for that matter.

“I know you mean that,” he starts. “Both of you.”

That sounds like the beginning of a thought, or argument. She curls her fingers around the cool metal of his hand and doesn't let go.

"But?"

“But,” he agrees. “Someone has to pay. For what I did. For what HYDRA did. And it’s not going to be either of you.”

"It's not going to be you, either," she says, stubborn. "If anyone's going to pay, it'll be HYDRA itself."

That grain of an idea is slowly blossoming in her mind into something resembling an actual plan. "What do we even have a team called the Avengers for if not to do some avenging?"

"That's not - I meant," he tries to clarify. "You can't - neither of you. If you try to keep them away from me, you'll become the enemy. You'll be a target. They're already going to start asking how much Steve knew. Could have known. If he's been hiding things. It won't stick, not the way things are now, but the more you try to block them from me, the worse it'll get."

He shrugs his right shoulder at her question. "I don't know. Until now, I never went up against them... not directly. The shadows were different."

Sharon frowns at him. "When you say we'll become targets, do you mean for HYDRA or for the international intelligence and defense community?"

She watches him, tucked away here into this cave with her. "Or the government?"

"HYDRA's spinning right now. Free-fall. But there's more of them out there. Hidden bases all over the world," he tells her, low and even. "Distract and redirect. The more they can use the chaos to hide and rebuild or rework the other things they're doing, the more they will."

He gives her barely a second to absorb that before he continues, "The government will be looking for someone to blame. Some reason HYDRA went unnoticed. Someone to put on the hook for destroying Insight. You know I'm right about this."

She absorbs that a moment, thoughtful, then looks back at him with her eyebrows arched and a pert tilt to her mouth. "Seems like the best option is to take the fight directly to HYDRA, then. Go after those bases and their people."

Sharon purses her lips and taps her fingers for a moment, exaggerating a moment in thought, then shrugs. "Well, I was looking for something to do with all this sudden free time."

Bucky eyes her. She doesn't seem like she's kidding. Still, he has to be sure he's understanding her correctly.

"Go rogue?"

"Is it going rogue, though?" She cants her head, considering him.

"Or is it just... freelancing?"

"Depends on if you're signing up with another agency or not, I guess."

Since SHIELD's no longer an option to freelance from.

"Well, exactly. I'm a free agent right now." She shrugs.

"There's nothing stopping me from going full vigilante."

He eyes her harder than before. "We'll see," he settles on. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should be decided in a cave, without more planning. Not for her, anyway, although it's not unfamiliar to him.

"Yeah." She squeezes his hand, unsure if he can even feel the gesture, then lets go and pushes up to her feet.

"Come on, let's go back. Steve's probably up by now."

He gets up as well, but hesitates before heading for the opening to the outside. Bucky steps to the side and runs his fingers over the little shelf again.

"What did you use this for? Anything?"

She half-turns, glance flicking to the little shelf. "Not much. I'd put little keepsakes there sometimes, maybe. It's a good spot to hide a little treasure."

He runs his fingers over it again, feeling the texture, then nods and lets his hand drop as he comes to join her.

"Was there anywhere else you wanted to show me? Before we go back?"

"There's lots, but it can wait."

There's no rush, hopefully. They all need some time to process, and they may as well make this house their base while they do.

He looks uncertain for a moment but nods anyway. Bucky follows her out of the little cave and falls in on her left side to walk with her back to the house.

"It's quiet here. Peaceful." He murmurs it, reluctant to disturb the morning's hush.

Sharon nods, taking in the familiar sights of the woods, breathing in the clean, fresh air.

"I want you to stay," she says, finally. "And I think you should, too. It's safe here, at least for now. We can figure things out and regroup. And like you said... it's quiet. Peaceful. It's a good place to work through some things."

"As long as I'm not putting you and Steve at risk." It's not a no.

She watches him over her shoulder as they walk, in quick glances. "Will you let us decide what's an acceptable risk or not?"

He has to consider that carefully, as he’s coming to believe no risk would be deemed unacceptable when it comes to them.

“Together,” he counters, carefully, and ignores the flicker of nausea that comes from the challenge. It’s for their sake, not his.

"Together," she agrees, feeling an old, old pang at the word. Together, the way they used to work through things.

Something in the set of his shoulders relaxes at her acceptance. Bucky nods to her and moves to stay a little closer at her side.

She shifts closer to him, too, unable to maintain her distance, until her hand brushes his as they walk. The memory of the kiss he gave her the night before is seared into her memory, just like the very first kiss they ever shared was.

"I never thought I'd ever get to do this again," she murmurs. "Go walking in the woods with you."

"It feels familiar." Just as quiet as her observation had been. He hesitates, unsure, but then reaches for her hand and takes it gently in his.

"I'm glad." Maybe he'll never remember everything, maybe he'll never again be that brightly shining, laughing man who danced with her under the stars and swept her off her feet, but the core of him is still there, she thinks. And something in that core remembers her.

She laces her fingers with his and comes close to walk at his side, close enough she can lean her head on his shoulder a moment.

His breath stops in his throat for an instant as she leans so trustingly against him. He's careful to match his steps to hers so he won't jostle her. Bucky glances ahead to where the treeline breaks, opening up into the cleared area by the house, and draws them slowly to a stop.

Their pace, already slow, diminishes even further, and she looks up at him as he guides them to a stop, her steps carrying her just far enough to be able to turn and face him, her fingers still entwined with his.

"What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing's wrong. Just... a moment? Before?"

Bucky glances around and leans back against the nearest tree, and tries to hint that she can lean against him again by a silent tug on her hand.

She goes without argument, and when he leans against the tree she presses close to him, her hair brushing against his cheek while her free hand goes to his side. For a moment, she closes her eyes and breathes him in, the familiar warm scent of him.

He rests his left hand at her waist with care to avoid any chance that she might feel either confined or distressed by the metal, and stays quiet. Bucky breathes, slow and deep, absorbing the sound of birds, the green scents of the world around them, and the soft feel of her.

He feels different against her, larger and harder and with the added bulk of his metal arm, but she doesn't care. She was never going to get to lean on him like this ever again, or even see him again.

"I missed this, too," she murmurs, finally.

“I just thought it would be nice.” For her. For him. A moment stolen out of the cruel madness of the world.

"It is nice. It's really nice."

She opens her eyes and looks up at him. "I just want to hold onto you and never let go."

His eyes are dark when they meet hers.

"I'm sorry I was gone for so long."

She reaches up to gently smooth back the locks of his long hair that fall into his face as he looks at her. "I'm just glad to have you back."

He holds still under her touch, just watching her. He doesn't know why she would be, not with how he is now, but he doesn't see any signs that she's only saying it to try to make him feel better.

He didn't ask her to marry him before he fell, but it doesn't matter: she'd been as committed to him as if he had, even if she'd never really thought about marriage, and she's as locked in now as she was then. If they had gotten married, it would have been 'til death,' right? And neither of them died. Not really.

Her touch is gentle at his temple, in his hair. "Sweetheart," she murmurs, remembering.

He makes a small inquisitive sound in response and waits to see if she'll elaborate.

Things really are different; how different, she's not sure she'll know for a long while yet, but it's clear they are, just from the simple fact that they're in each other's arms but not tangled up in each other so close it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Her throat works as she looks up at him. "I want to kiss you again," she murmurs. "Is that okay?"

For her to want it? For her to do it? Even she's not sure exactly what she's asking.

Is he supposed to say no? He's not sure. Bucky nods anyway, affirming, and bends his head a little to encourage her.

She leans up, lashes lowering as her glance falls to his mouth, but pauses a breath away, ruthlessly pulling herself back, desperate to keep from hurting him. "Would you be able to tell me 'no'?"

Weapons don't want things. They'd done their best to shock want and need out of him, and she has no idea if he even can want her anymore, the way he used to.

"I don't know," he admits, barely audible. "But I--"

He swallows, trying to find the right words, to not fuck this up, to not cause her any more pain.

"--I know what it feels like to not want something. And that isn't - I'm not - you're not pushing me into anything," he settles on. "I can't-- I can't say, I can't ask, not without, like you saw, but -- "

"Good enough," she murmurs, and pushes up the rest of the way, pressing her lips sweetly to his. Her whole body aches with it, with pure longing, though she tries to keep herself from pushing too hard.

His right hand tightens a little on hers as she kisses him, and as he kisses her back his left arm wraps carefully around her waist, drawing her closer against him.

She makes a small sound, sore and wanting, and lets go of his hand to wind her arms around his neck and press herself fully against him, chest to chest and belly to belly, her heart beating wildly like a bird trapped against her ribs.

He kisses her again, slow and sweet, and wraps his right arm around her as well, holding her close.

After a moment and another kiss, he carefully runs his right hand up her back and threads his fingers into her hair, cradling the back of her neck.

A shiver runs through her at the feeling of his fingers in her hair, running up her back, and she slips her own up the back of his neck into the long, silky threads of his hair, gripping lightly the way he used to love.

He gasps against her mouth at the sensation that rips through him, and his next kiss is far less controlled than before.

Maybe not everything's gone. He reacts just like he ever did, slipping the leash just a little on his self-control, and she presses her attack, deepening the kiss and tightening her fingers in his hair. There aren't any chaperones here; there's no worry anyone will interrupt them. She kisses him like it's her last chance; maybe it is.

A low groan sounds deep in his chest as she tangles herself with him and he begins to drown in her, and as he does he pulls her to him, needing to feel her, wanting more of her as desire surges --

--and as it does a flash of pain follows, arcing up his spine in punishment and he jerks back, slamming himself hard against the tree he'd been leaning against before.

Edited 2024-05-15 01:23 (UTC)

"Bucky!" One second, she's lost in a wild surge of passion and desire, and the next he's ripping himself from her like someone jerked him away, and Sharon lets go like he's a burning coal, horrified, reaching for him before she snatches her hands back, afraid to hurt him any further.

One hand covers her mouth, the other fists in the air, trying to keep from touching him. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's not." He reaches up to take her hand between his, trying to uncurl her fingers. His breathing is ragged.

"You didn't do anything wrong. It was me. It was - I did - it was me. Not your fault."

"I started it." She lets him uncurl her fingers, her own gentle, just barely letting her fingertips brush his palm.

"I don't want to hurt you, Bucky. I don't want... I don't want touching me to hurt you."

"It's not your fault," he insists. That much, he's clear on. It's not her behavior or her wants that caused the backlash. It was what he wanted, for himself, enough to act on.

"I think... I think it's going to take time. For me to - to figure how to work around it. There were, were things I did before, to, to stretch the limits. I just ... I'll have to find new things. New ways. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Sharon."

She curls her fingers around his, light, her pulse still hammering in her ears, in her chest. "How can I help?"

If wanting her will only cause him pain... can she help?

"Be patient with me." It's a mere whisper, half prayer and half plea.

Bucky swallows hard against the tightness in his throat and tries to explain what he's slowly beginning to work out from tangled memories and new experience both. "It's - from what I can tell. Could tell, before, too. They didn't - didn't care what I thought. They knew - they knew they'd erase that between missions anyway. Or what I felt. That didn't matter to them either. Only-- only what I did."

"As long as you need." She promises it, vows it. "Whatever you need, Bucky."

As for what she needs... going after HYDRA will be a good start. The ones she comes across might not be the ones who did this to him, but that's a distinction she doesn't care too much about making.

Very gently, he squeezes her hand, then bows his head and presses an equally gentle kiss to her fingers before letting go - albeit reluctantly.

She lets her hand come back to her side and steps back, though her eyes never leave him.

"It's okay, Bucky," she murmurs. "One day, we'll figure out how to get around it, or how to break it. And I'll be right here."

Distress flickers in his glance at the way she removes herself from his proximity, although he swiftly controls his reaction.

"It's not your fault," he says again. "It's not anything you did that caused it. You can -- you can act. It's only when I - I tried to."

The look in his eyes stabs into her just like any knife, and she steps closer again, reflexive, wanting to soothe. "It's not fair," she murmurs. "I don't want it to hurt you if you want me."

“They didn’t care about fair. Only compliance.”

He reaches slowly to brush a lock of hair back from her shoulder.

"I know."

She takes a breath as he brushes her hair back over her shoulder and gives him a wry smile. "I guess I'll have to do the wanting for both of us until we figure out a way around it."

He shakes his head and tries again to explain. “It’s not that I don’t want. Or not exactly. That’s complicated. But now, this - it was only when I, I tried to, to…take control?”

He sounds a little uncertain as he finishes, as it’s not quite the right word but he’s not sure how else to say it. “To do - to do more than respond.”

Edited 2024-05-15 20:27 (UTC)

"I don't want that to hurt, either."

She settles her hands lightly at his sides, looking up into his face. "I love you. I don't want you to be hurt by anything that has to do with me."

“I know you don’t. I’m sorry. But it’s not your fault.”

He curves his right hand gently to her cheek for a second before letting it drop again.

She sighs and reaches for his hand with hers, twining their fingers together. "Well, we won't be able to fix it right now," she murmurs, tugging at his hand. "So we may as well head back inside. But just so you know... I still want you as much as I ever did."

He squeezes her fingers and leaves his hand in hers as they start to walk back again.

After a moment, he huffs a faintly amused breath. “If you were wondering if I did, I guess you kind of have proof now.”

Sharon glances over at him at that. "I was," she murmurs, a little wry. "Wondering. So... that's good to know."

She flicks another look at him. "It's been a long time. Even without everything that happened to your memory... I'd have understood if you didn't feel the same way anymore."

“I didn’t know I could feel anything anymore.” Low but clear. “I know I’m not the man you remember.”

"I don't think I'm exactly the woman you remember, either." She looks ahead to the path they're taking, the thinning of the trees that means they're almost back.

"I had to hide a lot. Even from you."

“I guess we’ll find out who we are now.” He glances over at her.

"I guess so." People who still love each other, she hopes, or who can fall in love all over again. She knows what he says, but surely there's no way every part of Bucky's big and generous heart, that was so full of love, could be wholly gone.

At least some of it, she knows, was still there, for a little while. He'd loved Nat, too.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Again. He doubts it’s doing any good but he doesn’t know what else to say.

“That I wasn’t able to stay. Stay him. Stay at all.”

Him, he says, like he's not talking about his own past self, and she looks away, blinks back a sudden stinging scrim of tears as her throat thickens. Is she going to have to mourn him all over again?

Is the man she loved so much still, forever, gone? "You were taken," she says, flat. "HYDRA can make their apologies to me when I go for their throats."

She looks away from him and he doesn’t know why, but he knows it was the wrong thing to say.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

It's easier to focus on revenge than it is to think about her still-broken heart. Belatedly, she realizes her fingers have tightened almost painfully hard on his. It's an effort to relax them, but she does, after a moment.

“Hurt, angry, or both?”

Quiet and matter of fact.

"Let's focus on 'angry.'"

Which is really an answer of both, but it's not like he needs to hear her say it. She's hurt him enough already.

It’s what he’d figured. Bucky looks up toward the house.

“Do you want me to stop apologizing?”

She does look over at him, now, and there's a well of hurt under the banked fury in her eyes, along with something sore and longing. "I'm not going to stop you from saying things. No one's going to stop you from saying what you want anymore."

The pain in her eyes slices him like a knife. “That’s not what I asked.”

"No, it's not." She shakes her head at him, minute.

"But if it helps you to apologize, apologize. Just know I don't think any of it's your fault. And neither does Steve."

“I still did it. All of it.” More than either of them know.

She still hasn’t answered his actual question, but he thinks he knows the answer anyway.

"Yeah?"

She slows to a stop, drawing him to a halt with her before she looks up at him. "If it had been me or Steve who had been lost, and brainwashed, and tortured, and turned into a human weapon, would you blame us?"

“No. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t blame yourself.”

He looks away again, scanning the treeline before they step out of cover.

"You just said yourself you could not want things," she points out. "I know you must feel guilty. I just want you to understand Steve and I don't think you are."

“I understand that. I do.”

What it means in the end they have yet to see.

"Okay." Whatever he might be looking for in the treeline, there's nothing but birds and insects as they step out into the clearing where the house sits and begin crossing the lawn.

He tries to brace himself internally for whatever’s coming next as he walks beside her back to the house.

Coffee first, though. That seems a small enough thing to allow himself to anticipate. Safe, too.

He hates what he’s doing to her, to them, by the sheer fact of what he’s become. Maybe he should try to contact Natasha; she’d gotten out, she’d assimilated somehow, she must know how it’s done. Maybe she’d at least be willing to tell him how to avoid the land mines he keeps tripping over.

She sets a hand lightly on his back as they head up the stairs to the porch and into the house, where Steve looks up from the paper he's reading at the island, a cup of coffee in his hand. It gives her another pang to see him there — a glimpse into another life, maybe — before she smiles at him. "Good morning."

"Good morning," he returns, glancing between them. "Have a good walk?"

Bucky nods. It's easier than trying to say anything else, even if he knew where to start to explain, even if it weren't private - and then he realizes there is something he can safely say. "Sharon was showing me around a little."

His glance flicks to the paper. "Any news we should know about?"

Steve glances from Bucky to her and slips out a page from the paper, offering it over. She takes it, her glance flicking over it, then frowns at him.

"A hearing?"

Tension sets in every line of him.

"Hearing for who?"

She frowns at the paper, then offers it to him. "All of us, pretty much. By way of Nat."

He scans it quickly, and what he sees doesn't do anything to reassure him. "They're going to want blood."

"They always do." She takes the page back and offers it back to Steve before going to get some more coffee. "Fury won't help; he's still pretending to be dead. But we should do something, Steve."

"I could go to the hearing," Steve says, a little doubtfully but still game. "I know Nat was planning on handling it, but--"

"Have you gotten any better at lying?" Bucky asks, point-blank.

"He hasn't," Sharon answers, while Steve gives her a wry look but doesn't argue. She pours her coffee and fixes it for herself, then leans back against the counter, speculative.

"I could go, but I'm SHIELD all the way down. Nat at least has the protection of being an Avenger."

"At least it's public. Sort of. She'll have an exit strategy. That'll help."

Bucky shakes his head. "They'll be wanting answers. As well as blood. You'll have to decide what you want to tell them."

"We'll figure it out." And she'll get in touch with Nat however she can. "It isn't for a week or so."

Probably longer, if she knows anything about the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy.

He glances back and forth between them. "Does anyone else know you found me?"

"Sam," Steve tells him. "Maria Hill. No one else."

"No," Steve tells him, answering for them both. "Sharon and I are the only ones. And Peggy, but..."

He glances at Sharon, who meets his eyes for a long moment before turning a wry look on Bucky. "If Aunt Peggy says anything, people will just think she's confused."

He nods.

"You should tell Natasha. Before the hearing. To plan. In case it helps."

He leaves that decision to them and turns away to go pour a cup of coffee for himself. It's a small act, choosing to take that tiny luxury, but no less significant for it.

"Somehow I don't think she'll be any more interested in throwing you under the bus than we are," Sharon murmurs, flicking a glance at him. He doesn't know yet that she knows about what happened with him and Natasha when he trained her, but she'll have to tell him, soon.

"No." He's sure of that much, at least. Despite everything. "But she'll do what's needed."

He's sure of that too, and it comes through in his tone of voice.

"Good think it's not needed, then," she tells him, without room for argument.

"Sharon's right," Steve says. "We're not using you for leverage or anything else. If we tell Nat, it'll be because she'd want to know you're safe."

He takes a slow sip of coffee, watching them both over the rim of the mug. "What if it could help?"

Steve sets his own coffee down, looking up at Bucky with a crinkled brow.

"How?"

He shrugs. "I'm still working on that. I don't think it's a good idea for me to be in their custody."

Not to mention he's damn certain neither of the two here with him would stand for it.

"But if there turns out to be a way, maybe you shouldn't rule it out. Is all I'm saying."

"We'll see," is as far as Steve's willing to go, and Sharon catches his eye again for a moment, one corner of her mouth tucking into a rueful half-smile.

"And if we do start telling people," Steve continues, after he looks away from her and back to Bucky, "I want to make sure we've got you covered, first. We've got to try and figure out how to undo what they did to you, Buck."

Bucky feels himself grow still. He shakes his head, once; it seems to be the only movement he can manage.

"They reprogrammed my head, Steve. My mind. There's no way to undo something like that."

Steve shakes his head at him, stubborn. "You don't know that. Nobody knows that for sure."

"Steve's right," Sharon murmurs. "If you were programmed, you can be deprogrammed."

"And HYDRA doesn't have anyone as smart as Tony and Bruce on their side," Steve points out. "We'll figure it out. I'm not just going to sit here and say we can't do anything."

He flinches a little at Tony's name; he can't help it, even though he kicks himself for it. "I don't know Bruce," he demurs, trying to buy himself time, even just a moment before he has to shatter their world. Again.

She'd let him keep this to himself the night before, whatever it is, but they both knew that was a temporary thing. "You've heard of him," she promises. "Bruce Banner. But, Bucky, I think it's time you tell us why you react every time you hear Tony's name."

Nausea wells up in the back of his throat as the screams of the dead start wailing in his head.

("Sergeant Barnes?")

"Tony Stark won't want to help me." He keeps it as steady as he can, trying not to look either of them in the eye, cowardly though it may be. He looks into the air somewhere between them instead.

"Because I killed his parents. I killed Howard."

She and Steve both stare at him, their coffees forgotten. "What?" Steve says, a little blankly, while Sharon shakes her head, disbelieving.

"They died in a car crash," she says. "Aunt Peggy told me."

"December 16, 1991," he confirms, just as quietly as before. "I engineered the crash. Made it look like an accident. It wasn't. The mission was to sanction and extract, leaving no witnesses."

The look in his eyes is bleak. "Howard - I didn't know him. He - he tried, but I -- "

His ability to speak chokes off there and he shakes his head. "At least I made it quick."

"The mission." Steve's clinging to that word with all she's got; she recognizes it, because she's doing the same thing herself. He's breathing hard, but his voice is ruthlessly steady as he goes on.

"They sent you to assassinate him? Why?"

"He was a courier." Horror fills him as he suddenly realizes Steve doesn't know. Probably doesn't know. Would anyone have told him?

"For Project Rebirth. They were trying to reproduce the serum, Steve. The one that changed us. And they got far enough to test it."

Abruptly, Steve gets to his feet, pushes his coffee mug away — so he won't break another glass, Sharon thinks, vaguely — and turns, running his hand over his mouth, before he looks at her. "Did you know anything about this?"

It's not accusatory, exactly, but she can't blame him for his suspicions. "Did Peggy?"

"No." She shakes her head, firm. "And I don't know, Steve... she might have. I've never heard of Rebirth, they must have locked it down tight, after... but I'm not surprised they tried it."

He doesn't know, either. He'd like to say Peggy Carter would never have done it, but she'd been involved with the project that changed Steve, so he doesn't know.

A flash of memory rocks him - a bar in Korea, a fight that led to a replacement arm, a man's face. Bradley. That'd been his name. Isaiah Bradley. Who the Army'd put through horrors of his own.

None of this makes it to his expression. He stays still, stays quiet, and gives them space to come to terms with it.

Steve leans on the island, palms and fingers flat, and she can tell he's doing his best to calm himself. For her part, she feels sick: Howard had been their friend. All of them. Each one of them now is revisiting his death in a way they almost certainly never thought was possible.

Finally, Steve takes and exhales a deep, slow breath. "You're right that Tony won't take it well. I'll... we'll figure something out."

"Just. Don't get your hopes up." Whisper-soft. "He's going to hate me. It's understandable."

The thought of Howard's son hating him twists something in his gut, but there it is. He murdered Tony Stark's parents, and Howard's kid deserves to hate him for it.

Steve shakes his head, staring at the island, before looking over at Bucky. "If he meets you — if he hears about the programming — "

"Steve," Sharon says, soft. "Whatever you're thinking, we can't hide it from him. Not for long. You can't. He'd take it like you've been lying to him."

"He's your friend." Even if he hadn't already had an inkling of it from before, this would make it plain as day. Turns out he can still read distress in Steve Rogers' features as easy as any book.

"You don't deserve to lose any more friends. Or to have to try to lie to him."

"So are you." There's no give in Steve's voice. "I won't lie to him. But I'm not going to stand around while he works out his feelings about his parents on you. Let me handle Tony."

He closes his eyes, a flicker of pain crossing his face, and she knows he's thinking of Howard as he was: charming, irrepressible, brilliant. Sharon pushes off the counter and comes around to put a light hand on his shoulder, waiting until he opens his eyes and looks at her before she lifts it away again.

He turns his head back toward Bucky, shakes it. "I don't blame you for Howard and Maria, Buck. I can't. That wasn't your decision."

I blame me. It rises to his lips as his gaze flicks back and forth between them, and he knows, he knows it won't make a difference in how either of them feels.

Weariness hits him like a battering ram, even as he tries to explain anyway. "I know you don't. But I still did it. You have to accept that someone has to pay for that."

"Someone will," Sharon says, grim, before she turns back to Steve. "Bucky says there are HYDRA bases all over. We've got to take them out."

"How many?" Steve wants to know.

Bucky shakes his head. "Lots. I-- I know, at least all the ones I've seen, and I, I think I know where to find them. How to find them. But I have to pull it out of my head. I will. I will. I will, I swear, I--"

"Bucky." This time, she goes to him, puts a hand on his arm, waiting for him to look at her. "It's okay. Don't try to force it. We need time to plan and regroup, anyway. And then we'll start looking."

He glances down at her, his eyes dark, but he goes quiet and doesn’t protest.

He’s not sure what else to say, anyway. Not yet, although an idea is beginning to form.

She looks back over at Steve, who's finally starting to relax a little again. Neither of them have managed to fully accept what Bucky told them, she thinks; Howard was their friend. It's like they've lost him all over again. "When do you have to check in with the other Avengers?"

Steve shakes his head. "I should do it soon. Especially with Fury going under the radar."

"Where are they?" Intel is good. Intel will be useful, and maybe talking about his friends, his new team, will help Steve settle.

"Scattered, for the time being," Steve tells him. "A few in New York, Nat's in DC, the others... I don't know. Well, Thor's back on Asgard."

Thor. Still weird, Sharon thinks.

“Would it be better if you went back to New York to check in?”

He’s careful to keep the question mild and unconcerned, and doesn’t let himself examine anything he might be feeling.

"At some point, probably." Steve gives his best friend a steady look. "But not today."

Sharon leans back against the island, crossing her arms over her chest. "You should give them a call, at least," she points out. "I know Tony's been busy, but even he must have noticed all this."

He doesn't flinch as much at Tony's name. Now that the secret's out, he's able to hide it better.

Bucky decides not to think about that, and focuses instead on Sharon's point. "She's right. You don't want them to worry about you. We'll be fine."

That might be a lie, but he's not sure.

Steve glances from him to Sharon, who nods. "It'll be fine," she promises. "Just... don't let them trace your location, maybe. For the time being."

He gives Sharon an appraising look at that, then turns a slightly dubious one on Steve. "Do you know how to prevent that?"

"Uh — " Steve rubs at the back of his neck. "Well — "

Sharon shakes her head at him and pushes off the island. "I've got a burner you can use," she tells him. "I'll set it up for you. Even Tony will have a tough time pinging your location."

He doesn’t laugh any more, isn’t sure when he last did, but for just a moment he wants to. “Good think you’ve got her looking out for you.”

"No kidding." Steve looks over at her, and she smiles back at him, and she thinks they're both thinking the same thing: that she's been looking out for him and he's been looking out for her for a while now.

"Right back at you, Rogers," she murmurs, before her smile turns wry. "I'll go grab that phone."

Bucky goes back to drinking coffee. He takes a moment to consider the coffee maker and decides they might need another pot.

It gives him something to do, at any rate, that isn’t thinking or dealing with anything else.

“Refills?” he asks.

"Sure," Steve says, as Sharon heads off to some other part of the house. It could be almost anywhere — this place is still alarmingly large to him, even after seeing the way Tony lives.

Tony. How's he gonna tell him? How on earth is he going to find a way to make any of this okay? It had been bad enough, waking up and finding Howard was gone, too, but this...

He huffs out a breath without realizing it, then gets up and goes to the cupboard to take out some boxes of cold cereal. "You guys eat anything yet?"

He pours Steve’s mug full and claims the one Sharon had left behind to fill it as well before topping off his own. Bucky considers her mug, searches out sugar and cinnamon and milk from where he’d watched her get them earlier, and sets them out for her when she gets back.

As he starts making a fresh pot, he says, “Not yet.” After a second and a glance at Steve’s collection of cereal, he adds, hesitantly, “There are eggs.”

Steve chuckles at that, shaking one of the boxes of cereal.

"This not up to your standards?"

“It’s fine,” he hastens to assure. “I just thought if you wanted something…more.”

Given his standards run to functional high-protein rations to maintain optimal operational levels, cereal’s not ideal, but he doesn’t think Steve wants to hear that.

Steve glances at the cereal box, then shrugs and sets it down, searching around for a pan. "May as well. Sharon never eats enough for breakfast, anyway."

Did he know that? He’s not sure. It sounds right, but not as though it’s a recollection. Bucky dwells on that for a few moments, trying to figure it out, while he gets out the eggs and sets them beside the stove.

“You two eat breakfast together a lot?” he asks, trying to put the pieces together.

Steve looks up at him, then flushes, the tips of his ears turning pink. "Not like that," he hastens to say. "She stayed with me for a little while right after... right after she got back. And I've been here with her a couple of times. I..."

He trails off, then sighs, turns to face Bucky more fully, his blue eyes grave and sincere. "When she came back, I promised myself I'd watch out for her, take care of her, for you."

"It's good. That you have each other," Bucky tells him, with absolute sincerity. "I wanted that for you, if it went wrong."

Turns out he's able to talk about past wants, past needs, without triggering the programming by trying to override it in the present. He makes a mental note of that as he continues, "So. It's good, Steve. It is."

"It has been," Steve agrees. The friendship he has with Sharon is different than the one he has — had — has with Bucky, but it had gotten them both through some tough times. "For both of us, I think."

“Yeah.” He nods, eyes Steve’s handling of the pan, and considers if he should try to take it over himself or not before concluding Steve might be more likely to come up with something more than merely functional.

“I think she thinks so too. Which you probably already know.”

He's not the best cook, but even he can scramble and fry eggs, and he puts the pan on the stovetop, then heads to the fridge for the eggs and butter and milk. "It's funny," he says, as he gets out a bowl and starts cracking eggs into it. "I always liked her, you know, but we were never really close, back during the war. That didn't come until we were both here."

"I guess you had more in common then. Now, I mean. After she came back and after you got out of the ice." He hunts up the bread and sets it by Steve, then collects plates and silverware.

"I guess so." One big thing, anyway. He takes the bread with a nod and feeds a few slices into the toaster, then goes back to scrambling eggs while butter melts in the pan. "It was handy, too. I wouldn't have enjoyed having some SHIELD agent I didn't know living down the hall from me."

Bucky blinks thoughtfully at the toaster for a moment or two, then leans back against the counter with his coffee, deliberately trying to mimic the more relaxed stance he's noticed the other two using.

"I'd think not." Not to mention the odds on them being HYDRA.

Footsteps in the hall herald Sharon's arrival, and she comes back into the kitchen, sniffing at the air. "Breakfast?"

She comes to hand the phone to Steve, then goes to fix herself another cup of coffee with the cinnamon Bucky set out earlier.

“Breakfast,” he confirms, with a nod towards Steve where he’s manning the pan. “More than cereal.”

Something about his tone is deliberately bland, almost innocent.

Sharon gives him a faintly exasperated glance at that. "What's wrong with cereal? It's got vitamins."

And it's easy.

"Lacks staying power," he observes, just as mild. "Protein's required to maintain optimal muscle function."

"That's what the milk's for," she points out, but it lacks heat, as Steve chuckles and pours the scrambled liquid egg into the pan, where it starts cooking gently. Sharon settles onto a stool at the island and sighs into her coffee.

"Can't believe I'm gonna get bossed around by two of you now."

Edited 2024-05-25 22:08 (UTC)

The look that he gives her falls somewhere between uncertain and resigned. "I figure you give as good as you get."

He glances at Steve for confirmation. Or maybe backup.

Edited 2024-05-25 22:12 (UTC)

"Better than," Steve chuckles, meeting that glance with his own crinkled and laughing. Sharon rolls her eyes, but her mouth presses towards a hidden smile.

"You know, I was able to feed myself just fine before either of you came along."

Without warning, he has a flash of memory that rolls over him like a wave.

—- seething blue light rolling away on the ground the sky opening a figure clad in skintight white —-

“… think you’re the one who came along,” he says, after a long moment. Bucky blinks repeatedly to clear his vision of remembered light.

Edited 2024-05-26 09:10 (UTC)

She and Steve both look at him, sharp, as he falls silent, as the look in his eyes turns inward, before he speaks again and they exchange a glance before Steve turns back to the eggs, making sure they don't burn.

"I did," Sharon murmurs, still focused on Bucky. "Did you remember something?"

“The sky opened.” He looks up at her. “And you fell.”

Her expression softens as Steve turns off the stove and starts parceling out eggs and toast onto plates. "Yeah, I did. Almost right onto your head."

He nods. “Only I moved.”

It doesn’t sound like a question, but the next part is. “Did I bring you to Steve?”

"No," Steve says, setting out plates and getting butter for the toast, before putting a hand on Bucky's back and guiding him to a seat. "I was with Phillips, though."

"You brought Aunt Peggy," Sharon tells Bucky, as she takes her own plate. "And she gave me a uniform to wear."

He doesn’t resist, instead going where Steve directs with quiet compliance.

“Right,” he says slowly. “Instead of that white thing.”

"My catsuit," she agrees, then grins. "For some reason you thought it might cause kind of a stir in the camp."

He makes a skeptical sound in response. Steve sets the rest of their plates down and takes his own seat. “Get it while it’s hot,” he says, cheerfully.

Bucky nods but doesn’t touch the food until the others do.

"Thanks for the eggs, Steve," Sharon tells him, as Steve slides onto a seat of his own, before she digs in. It doesn't escape her notice that Bucky doesn't eat until they do, and she packs it away to think about more later.

"Bucky," she murmurs, after a moment. "The letters you wrote, they're still here. You could read them, if you— if you're interested. They might jog some more memories."

He takes a long swallow of coffee before he says anything.

“Do you want me to read them?”

I want you to want to read them. She doesn't say it. It wouldn't help.

She toys with her eggs for a moment, instead, then nods. "I think it might be a good idea for you to go through everything we've got. Not just the letters."

He thinks he sees a flicker in her glance. His answer must have been wrong, but he’s not sure why. Clearly she thinks it’s needed intelligence for him - and Steve, quietly observing while he makes inroads on breakfast, must agree - but isn’t it a violation of her privacy? Then again maybe it’s not since he wrote them originally. Or the man he was before the Winter Soldier did, anyway, the man who knew how to laugh and love and care and who never murdered any of his friends.

“Okay,” is all he says. “If you’re sure.”

"I am." Does he remember writing the letters, does he remember anything about what they say? If it's possible for a ghost to keep fighting...

"Besides, they're your things."

He frowns a little at that. “How can they be? I left them for you. Both of you. Didn’t I?”

"But you wrote them," she points out. "And... at least one of those letters is one that came for you. You should get to see it."

Her heart's been breaking all over again for the Barnes sisters, for Bucky in front of her. They should have had the chance to grow old together.

He opens his mouth to ask who it was from, only to go still as the display from the museum flashes behind his eyes.

“They’re all gone. Aren’t they.”

Steve's hand stills, before he looks over at his best friend with deep sympathy and understanding in his eyes.

And pain. They were his family, too. "I'm sorry, Buck. Yes."

He nods, and stares down at the plate in front of him.

It’s impossible to remember their faces, he finds. They all blur together in flashes.

Steve and Sharon exchange a look, before she reaches out to gently curl her fingers over Bucky's still hand. "But you do have some family left," she murmurs. "And I don't just mean us. Becky had children. The others, too."

His hand twitches under her gentle touch, and he looks up at her, then back and forth between them.

“Children?”

"Yeah." Steve smiles at him.

"I've met most of them. You're an uncle, Bucky."

Bucky stares at him like he’s just started speaking another language, one he himself doesn’t know yet. He’s not entirely sure he hasn’t.

“What?”

"A uncle," Steve repeats, his smile gentle but warm. "And you'd like the kids, you really would. They're swell."

That’s not the problem, he thinks. The problem is that they’d be horrified by the monster he’s become, compared to whatever they might have been told about their uncle - fuck, how is that even possible? - who died in the war all those years ago.

“I bet they were thrilled,” he manages, knowing he has to say something. “To see you.”

"Probably about as thrilled as I was to see them," Steve says, wistful, as Sharon's fingers squeeze Bucky's hand before letting go. "I know it's... a lot to take in."

His fingers feel cold where Sharon’s hand had been, without her warmth.

“All of this is. For everyone.” Maybe saying the obvious will help. Somehow.

Steve blows out a breath and goes back to his eggs. "Yeah. For everyone."

Sharon watches them both, toying with her own breakfast, her appetite nonexistent. Neither she nor Steve are really equipped to help Bucky, not with everything he told them, and it's possible they'll do something to actively harm him. Would he even be able to stop them? "Anyway," she says, setting down her fork and going back to her coffee. "I can show you the letters and files later."

“Okay.” It’s barely a murmur, low but clear. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t know what to do. He would if it were a mission, but now? He doesn’t know how to stop hurting them.

Steve glances pointedly at her plate, and she sighs, pushes it over to him, still mostly full. "You finish it," she tells him. "And then we should probably figure out how we're going to spend the time we have here, before you need to go to New York, Steve."

He tracks the movement of the plate and how little she’s eaten with a frown. His glance flickers to her face and he studies her for a moment before deciding not to press the issue.

Bucky looks back at Steve. “What objectives do we have?” he asks, splitting his attention between them.

"We'll need to keep an eye on the news," she muses, considering. "And decide if one or more of us will go into the city to be with Nat at the hearing."

"I'll need to figure out what to tell the Avengers," Steve says. "And what our next steps should be."

He’s quiet for a second or two, considering them. “Would more intel help? On HYDRA?”

Both of them focus on him like hunting dogs that have caught a scent. "Yeah," Steve says. "That would help a lot."

He nods. This feels familiar, he realizes; working together with the two of them toward a common goal.

The feeling lets his shoulders unknot a little, causes a subtle relaxation to run through him. “I have some. More when I can sort through my head. And I know where to find more. Targets. And their plans.”

"Great," Steve says, instantly. "We can go through what you do know today, that'll help us plan."

Sharon gives Bucky a curious glance. "What do you mean, you know where to find more?"

“HYDRA has bases hidden all over the world,” he tells them, very quietly. “The Winter Soldier’s been to more than a few of them. I…know where some of them are. I’ll remember more. The systems can be stripped.”

Steve turns to her. "Do you have maps here?"

Sharon nods and gets up, pouring the last dregs of her coffee into the sink before rinsing out her mug. "Maps... we can get a board." She looks around the bright kitchen, lips twisting, wry. "Well, I've had worse war rooms."

“Not here.” It’s too quick, but he can’t help it. The conditioning stirs and he shoves it back by concentrating on information security, rather than on the revulsion he feels at turning this space into an operational one.

“Some other room. Would be better.”

Her eyebrows flicker into a frown, but she nods. "We have plenty to choose from," she points out, and Steve stifles a quiet laugh. "Sounds like we've got our day pretty well planned out."

“Maybe that big dining room?” he suggests, thinking of the table. “Plenty of room for maps. I could get started marking known sites.”

"Sure." Sharon comes back over to take their cleared plates, bringing them to the sink. "I'll go grab them in a second. You guys go get set up."

He hesitates, eyeing her preparations, but takes her at her word and tips his head toward the hall with a glance to Steve.

“Go ahead. I need to grab something from upstairs.”

She rinses off the plates and sets them in the dishwasher, along with the mugs, then heads through the hall and moves through the house until she reaches the library. Somewhere in here, she knows, her father keeps an atlas and a collection of maps.

Once they've been retrieved, she heads into the dining room, spreading atlas and rustling paper over the table.

He'd more needed a moment to himself than he'd actually needed the battered composition notebook, but he has to bring something back downstairs with him and it'll do as well as anything else. Bucky shoves the brochure from Steve's exhibit more firmly into the back of it when it starts to slide out and grabs a pen as well, then hesitates.

He allows himself to sit down and breathe, just for a second, trying to put his thoughts in some kind of order. Maybe if he treats it like a mission report it'll be easier. But should he be doing that with them? He doesn't know. He doesn't know how to operate in the world the way the man he was before the war did. He barely knows his own name.

One step at a time, he decides, and the first one is out the door of the guest room. Bucky goes back downstairs, moving in near silence, and cautiously enters the dining room.

He comes to stand by Sharon at the table and studies the display. "Where do you want me to start?"

She straightens from where she's spreading out a map of Europe, and hands him a red marker pen. "With the ones you're sure about," she tells him. "And anything you know or remember about their personnel, security, entrances, exits. Whatever you don't remember, we'll have to get recon on."

He studies the map for a few moments before placing the first mark in Sokovia, outside Novi Grad. From there he moves to France, adds a question mark at the tip of Italy, and marks a spot in Berlin.

"Most of them had a similar layout. Except for the castle," he murmurs, absent and more than a little distant. "I can try to draw it."

"Castle?" Steve asks, leaning onto the dining table with both hands. It's a familiar stance, but one she hasn't seen from him since those days back in London.

Sharon studies the maps, mouth twisting. "Sokovia," she murmurs. "That might be tough. What kind of international jurisdiction do the Avengers have, Steve?"

“That may have changed too, given everything. I guess we’re independent now,” Steve realizes. “I’ll have to talk to Tony about that too.”

“Castle,” Bucky repeats. He’s moved on to North Africa, starting with Algeria. Bucky tips his head toward Sharon in confirmation of her observation as he continues,

“Sokovia. Von Strucker’s research facility.”

"Von Strucker," she repeats, frowning. "That sounds kind of familiar."

Maybe it's somewhere in the data Nat had leaked to the world. She'll have to start digging through those files.

"Wil- no. Wolf. Wolfgang." Tension threads through him as he struggles with the pieces of memory. "Scientist. Not serum. But something."

Steve frowns over at him. "He's experimenting on people?"

Bucky nods. “They never stopped.”

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Steve mutters. "Any idea what he's up to? Do you remember what he was using without the serum?"

He’s quiet for a few seconds. The castle in Sokovia had smelled like wet stone and blood and bleach, he recalls.

“There were rooms,” he says, slowly. “Underground. I think. Hidden. Cells. His - his subjects. People. Were in them. I didn’t - there was an argument. Whether or not to try the protocol on me. That’s why I was there.”

She knows Steve's going through the same mix of fury and sorrow and guilt as she is, every time Bucky mentions what they put him through. But it doesn't help to get upset, and it only makes him feel worse, so they manage it as best they can with tight jaws and fisting hands. "What was the protocol?" she asks, instead of anything else. "Do you remember?"

"There was a room. With an observation window." Each word is a little slow as he pieces it together, but steady and clear. "Some kind of device in it. It - it glowed. That's all I saw before they shut it down. Decided the risk of failure was too high and the loss of value if there were to be damage to the asset was unacceptable."

"Glowed?" Sharon's focus sharpens. "Like the cube?"

Bucky looks up from the map, surprised. "It wasn't blue. But--" He frowns, thinking back.

"--but otherwise yes. Maybe. yes."

She folds her arms and looks over to Steve. "What would that even mean?"

Steve shakes his head at them both, but he looks trouble. "I don't know," he admits. "But it can't be anything good. Loki had a staff that glowed like the cube, too. It's how he brainwashed Barton and the others."

Steve has all his attention in that moment. “Where is it now?”

Steve sighs and hangs his head for a moment, before he looks back up at Bucky. "Nat gave it to Sitwell," he says, and sucks at his teeth for a moment, frustrated.

"HYDRA's had it since then, and we had no idea."

He stares at Steve some more while memories flicker, then scrabbles for the notebook he’d discarded to the side. Bucky scrawls a quick sketch of the thing he remembers seeing, with its strangely glowing gem at one end, and shoves it at them.

It doesn't look familiar to her, but Steve swears under his breath, then grimaces.

"Yeah," he says, grim. "That's it."

“That’s what they’re using.” He stares down at the paper. “I didn’t think the light was the same, but maybe I was wrong, or they’ve got it set up weird somehow. But that’s the thing I saw in Sokovia.”

She looks over at Steve, her arms tightly folded across herself. "Steve, we've got to get it away from them. This has to be our priority."

“It’s well defended,” Bucky observes. It’s not denial, only warning.

Steve chuckles, a little. "Yeah. But we have Banner."

"We'll make a plan," Sharon tells Bucky. "Anything you can remember, we'll plan around."

“I’ll help. All I can.” Low and a little uneven, but he’s never meant anything more.

Bucky turns to another page and starts trying to sketch a map.

As Bucky works, Sharon shifts towards Steve, her arms still crossed. "We're going to need everyone on board for this," she tells him, low. "Everyone, Steve. So this may be our first priority, but yours needs to be Tony."

He glances at Bucky without meaning to, then makes himself tear his gaze away to meet Sharon's eyes instead. "I know." Even as he says it, he feels something deep inside him shudder before settling into a familiar stubborn determination.

"I know. But this isn't the kind of thing I can tell him over the phone. I could go to New York - or California if he's out there right now, I'm not actually sure. But I was thinking... it might be better if he met Buck first. Saw the man, rather than just hearing about what the Soldier did."

"You know him better than I do," she murmurs. "If that's how you want to play it, you know I'll back you up. But be careful, Steve. He's not gonna take it well if he thinks you've been lying to him."

"I'm not good at lying." He shrugs. It's only the truth, and he might as well admit it. "I just think if I lay it out for him so he can see for himself, it might help. But that means I either need to take Bucky to him, or bring Tony here."

She gives it some thought, then give him a quick nod. "Better do it here," she says. "Fewer people, no chances of anyone overseeing or overhearing anything.

"Thanks. I'll call him in a minute." But first, there's something he needs to ask. Steve shifts a little so Bucky can't see his face and lowers his voice.

"How are you holding up?"

Edited 2024-06-09 19:09 (UTC)

She takes a long breath, forcing it to stay steady, her shoulders tightening and lifting until she exhales in a quiet rush and gives him a rueful glance. "How are you holding up?"

It's as much an answer to his question as question itself. Neither of them ever expected... anything like this. And she's all too conscious of Bucky's careful concentration behind her. "You know me, Cap. I try to roll with the punches."

"I know." His answering look is just as rueful as hers, and he guesses it says all that needs saying. Steve shakes his head. "We have him back. Everything else we can figure out from there."

"Yeah." She wets her lip, then gives him a small smile as she finally unfolds her arms and reaches to curve her fingers briefly around his hand. "We have him back."

He squeezes her fingers, careful not to press too hard. "It's going to be okay," he murmurs. He's got no right to make a promise like that, but that doesn't stop him. It will be okay, whatever he has to do to help get them all there.

"Anything else before I go call Tony?"

"It will be," she murmurs. He's always been more optimistic than her, but she clings to it now, needing it more than ever.

Sharon huffs a wry breath and shakes her head before she squeezes his hand again and lets go. "Seems like plenty to me."

"You can say that again," Steve agrees. Bucky keeps his eyes firmly locked on the mess of a map that he's still trying to put together from the fragmented bits of his recollection.

Steve doesn't realize how good his hearing is, it's apparent. Although the other man had been speaking quietly, Bucky's pretty sure he hasn't missed a single word. He lets it all wash through him in a churn that he'll try to untangle and think about later, and only looks up when Steve comes back to stand beside him.

"I'm going to ask Tony to come here," he explains. "It's going to be hard no matter what, but I think it'll help if he can meet you. Are you ready for that?"

No. He doesn't say it. What good would it do? Bucky nods to signal acceptance.

She watches them both, her arms folded back across her ribs again, but her eyes are more on Bucky than on Steve. He doesn't like it, she thinks, but it's not like he's going to push back on any of their decisions. Maybe not even if he could.

"Let us know what he says, Steve," she tells him. "Bucky and I will keep working down here."

"As soon as I'm off the call," Steve promises. He gives Bucky a reassuring clap on the shoulder before pulling out his phone and wandering off in the direction of the back porch.

Bucky watches after him for a moment before he looks back down at the map and tries to refocus.

She waits until she hears Steve's steps on the stairs, then comes around the table towards Bucky. "Hey."

Her hand lands, light, on his arm. "Are you really okay with this?"

He keeps his gaze locked on the rough sketch and holds still under her gentle touch.

"Which part?"

Edited 2024-06-10 23:12 (UTC)

"Bringing Tony here."

All of it, really, but that's by far the most pertinent part just now. "Seeing him. Talking to him."

He draws a soft breath and glances sideways up at her.

"It doesn't matter. He deserves to know. Whatever makes it easier on Steve and on him is fine."

"It matters to us." She doesn't lift her hand away, and her fingers curl a little more firmly over his arm. "It doesn't have to be today."

"Waiting's not going to make it any easier," he counters. "On anyone."

"You know what I mean." Despite everything, she thinks he does, anyway. He knows she's trying to give him an out; she knows he'll never take it. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slow through her nose.

"Fine. But if at any point you need it to stop, I'm stopping it. Whether you tell me to or not."

Very, very quietly, Bucky murmurs, "Guardian angel."

Her smile is faint, but there, and warm. "That's right."

And she always will be, for as long as she gets any say in the matter.

He gives up on the map for now and turns to lean back against the table, watching her instead.

"Howard. I - was he happy? Before?"

Her fingers release as he turns, and Sharon folds her arms back up again before she shakes her head, uncertain. "I don't really know, Bucky. I was just a kid the few times I met him. And then after I got back, Aunt Peggy..."

Her lips press, wry. "Well, she wasn't exactly in any kind of shape to tell me about him. I know he was busy, with SHIELD and Stark Industries. But he was building weapons, war machines. I don't think it's what he really wanted to be doing."

He absorbs that in silence for a few seconds.

"He recognized me." Low and bitter and absolutely defeated, but he doesn't try to hide it. "That night."

Everything about the way he sounds, looks, makes her ache. She comes a step closer, lifts her hands to set them lightly on his chest as she looks up at him.

"I'm so sorry, baby."

He shudders at her sympathy, at her touch, at the way she moves toward him rather than away from the monster he's become. Metal whirs as he shoves his left arm behind him and away from her, his left hand tightening into a fist at the small of his back, but he doesn't otherwise pull away.

"His son will want to know. Won't he? How, I mean."

"I don't know." Probably, considering Tony's obsessive need for information; considering his tense relationship with his father and his much more solid one with his mother. "But it wouldn't surprise me."

She wishes Nat were here. She knows Tony better than Sharon does, might be able to predict his probable reactions. "Maybe. I don't think it would help anything, though."

He nods. "Okay." The look in his eyes is bleak but determined.

"I don't know much about him. He was never greenlit as a target. Evaluated, I think, but they never sent me after him."

"He's a lot like Howard," she murmurs, thinking. "But not, too. More... demons. But he's a good man. He helped a lot when I first got back, too."

"He did?" Guilt twists deep inside him, and he figures he'd better get used to that, but it's accompanied by curiosity. "What did he do?"

She runs her thumb idly over the rise of his collarbone beneath the fabric of his shirt. "I landed in New York," she tells him. "He picked me up and brought me to Avengers Tower, then got Steve and Fury. He checked me over right after I appeared, and then regularly after that, just to make sure there weren't any lingering effects from traveling via cube portal."

Sharon shakes her head, thinking. "He made sure I had clothes and a phone, offered me a place to stay... I wouldn't say we're friends, exactly, but we got to know each other, a little."

"I'm glad. That you had someone to help. When you - when you got back." Carefully, deliberately, he raises his right hand to brush her hair back from her face before letting it rest on her shoulder for a moment.

She leans into his touch, brief as it is, and lets her own hands slide to his sides, his hips, as he rests his palm on her shoulder. "Me too."

She'd been a wreck in more ways that one: uniform torn and dirty, later sobbing in Steve's arms. "He knows about my going back to the war... meeting you. All the others."

Surprise is clear in his eyes. "He does? Do all of them? Steve's new team, I mean."

"No," she tells him, shaking her head. "Tony knows, and now Nat knows, but that's it. Those two and Fury are the only ones. That information is classified to hell and back."

“Probably just as well. Still.” He gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze and lowers his hand.

“I guess we’ll see how it goes.”

"Yeah." He lets go; she doesn't. There hasn't been enough time, she hasn't had enough time with him under her hands yet. "Look, I don't want to hurt Tony. But I'm not gonna let him hurt you, either. Okay?"

“I know.” Howard’s son. Steve’s friend, and Sharon’s too. He doesn’t see any way this ends well, but he’ll have to come up with something fast.

All she wants to do is put her forehead against his chest and close her eyes. They've been going full tilt for days; they need a break.

There's no break coming. She exhales, long and steady, and finally lifts her hands away. "If we can figure out where to hit HYDRA and how, that'll help," she tells him, businesslike. "It'll give Tony somewhere to point his anger."

He tips his head a little, toward the map. He can still feel where her hands had been. "Sokovia first, or somewhere closer?"

"Sokovia first," she says, decisive. "We don't want to give them any sort of heads up that we're coming for them. To keep the element of surprise and catch them off guard, it has to be Sokovia first."

Bucky nods. "Satellite look-down, if possible. Current maps, if not. For planning the approach."

"Satellites would be easier with Tony's AI," she murmurs. "But maps we can get without a problem."

Bucky tilts his head a little, considering her. Very steadily, he points out, "I could scout it."

She slants a narrow-eyed glance over at him. He could, yeah. But:

"Not alone."

He meets that narrowed gaze with a bland one of his own.

"Why not?"

She counts off reasons on her fingers, starting with her right thumb. "Redundancy. You might get captured. You might need to send someone with a message. It's faster and more efficient to cover that much ground with another person. It's damn stupid to go alone."

Sharon drops her hand and looks up at him, just as bland. "Take your pick. I've got more, if you like."

"I'm getting the impression you have pretty strong opinions about this."

Bucky hesitates, then reaches up to gently touch her cheek. "I've done this a lot. It'll be fine."

She can't help it; she turns her head a little into his touch. "Are you really suggesting it because it's the best idea?"

Her eyes are dark and steady. "Or is there something else going on?"

“There’s a lot that’s going on. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.”

He leaves his hand where it is, gently cradling her cheek for a moment.

Her lashes flutter as she blinks, light and fast, as she lifts her own hand to cover his. Everything in her is aching and sore.

"Please don't ask me to stay behind while you go away on a mission again," she whispers. "Don't ask me to watch while you leave and maybe never come back again."

He sucks in a sharp breath as the realization hits him and reacts on instinct, taking a step closer to her. "Sharon."

"I should have been there." Some key has turned in some lock somewhere, all the grief that's been welling up in her since he took off his mask and she realized who he was bubbling up under her breastbone. "I should have forced my way onto that mission. I could have changed it, I--"

Everything hurts, and it isn't just because she's still bruised and battered from Rumlow, from the buildings coming down. From him. "I just got you back."

If asked, he'd never be able to explain why he does it or how he knows that it might be something she'd want, but a deeper, older part of him is certain enough that he's able to act. Bucky shifts, gathering her in an embrace and holding her close.

"It's not your fault. It's not," he swears, low but intense. "It never was. None of what happened was your fault, Sharon."

Her arms come up around him, her fingers fisting in his shirt with as much desperation as if he were trying to walk away from her right now instead of holding her. She presses her face against his shoulder and tries to build the wall back up. "I could have stopped it and I didn't," she whispers. "That makes it my fault. I can't do it again, Bucky, please."

He curls the fingers of his right hand over her shoulder, cradling her to him, drawing small circles with his thumb as he tries to think how to soothe her. "It's not your fault," he repeats.

"It's not. I know - I can understand why you think that, but it's not. Not yours, not Steve's. But okay. Okay. We'll figure out another way. I won't go scout it alone."

She breathes out a shuddering sigh, but doesn't let go. The fear that when she opens her eyes he'll be gone again, a dream vanishing into thin air, hasn't stopped gnawing on her since he first stepped out of the woods the day before. "Okay."

"Leave this for now?" he suggests, a little hesitantly - they do need to do something about it, but there's no reason a day's going to make any great difference. Not right now, although they should act soon to take the greatest advantage of HYDRA's current confusion.

He doesn't loosen his embrace.

"Sounds like we need to see what'll happen with Tony first, anyway."

"No." She doesn't let him go, but there's no give to her voice, either; it's stubbornly certain. "I can do this. We need to start planning out options."

"I know you can." He doesn't move.

She doesn't say anything, just breathes for a moment.

Finally, she speaks again, in a low murmur. "You hugged me first, this time."

He makes a low sound of assent and waits to see where she’s going with that.

It's just an observation, and, as far as she's concerned, not one that requires follow up. He hasn't been the one to reach for her so far; he reached for her now. It's interesting.

The problem now, of course, is that she doesn't want to let him go.

Apparently nowhere, and after a few seconds’ wait he decides not to pursue it. Bucky runs his right hand up and down her back.

After a moment, she forces her fingers to uncurl, her hands to unclench, and pulls back enough to look up at him. Her eyes are red, but dry.

"Maps and satellite imaging," she says. "And then we decide the approach and any necessary recon. We'll need to determine if they've managed to augment any other humans with the staff since you were there."

“Most died,” he says, quietly. “It’s why they decided not to risk me - the asset. I don’t know if any survived, or how many.”

He sets his hands at her waist, leaving her room to step back when she wants.

Edited 2024-06-13 20:48 (UTC)

"Yeah, about that."

She looks back up at him, dark eyes steady and solemn. "You said part of that mission, the one for Howard, was extraction. So what did you bring back? Was it the serum?"

He was still before, but now he's frozen, every muscle locked tight as he stares down at her with panic visible in the depths of his glance.

Well, she seems to have an answer to her question. "Hey."

She puts her hands back on his chest, her voice low and calm. "Breathe, Bucky. We'll figure it out. Whatever happened, we'll figure it out."

He shakes his head, although he's not sure whether he's denying that they can or the question itself. The very thought drives him to answer after all.

"It was." His voice sounds rough in his own ears. "Five doses."

Five doses. But the world would have noticed another five super soldiers, or even another five Winter Soldiers.

Still, it's real work to keep her voice level and calm. "Did they work?"

“Not completely.” He can’t look at her, so he looks down and past her shoulder, into empty space.

“It made them strong, but it drove them insane.”

Strong but insane sounds much too much like the Red Skull for her comfort. He's not looking at her, but he's answering her questions, and he hasn't frozen up again, so Sharon doesn't try to force his glance back to meet hers. Her voice is steady as she probes further.

"Are they still a threat?"

“Not right now.” It’s all he can offer.

He doesn’t - is there anyone left who knows? Who’d dare reactivating them even after what happened, now that he’s escaped?

"Okay," she murmurs. It isn't, not by a long shot, but she can't press much more on this. "Okay, Bucky. Then we have some time to figure out what to do about them."

Maybe not much time, but some. She'll take it.

His reply is nearly inaudible in how quiet it is, but every word is clear. "They can't be controlled. Not like me."

She wants to tell him you won't be more much longer, but she has no idea how long it might take to remove the controls from his mind. The only thing she knows for sure is that even bringing it up will only be painful to him. "Then we'll deal with them some other way."

He nods, still looking down and a little to the side, and says nothing.

HYDRA would have reactivated them if they could have. If they could have used them in any way. He's sure of that. One Winter Soldier was good, but six would have delighted them. They never did, and therefore they couldn't. Can't.

He might have to make sure. But not yet.

"Bucky." She tugs lightly on his shirt, wanting him to look back at her, wanting him to come back from the blankness in his eyes. "We'll figure it out. I promise."

Her bid for attention is gentle but clear. He blinks and focuses back on her face.

"I know." He draws a careful breath. "They weren't - they're not. Like me. Just so you know."

She gives him a small, wry smile. "You always were one of a kind, baby."

But whatever the process did to him, it didn't drive him insane. He's different, splintered, but his mind is there, even if it's in pieces. "Sokovia first. Then we'll figure out what to do about them. Okay?"

"Sokovia first," he agrees, and leaves the rest alone. Bucky glances at the door Steve had disappeared through, then shifts to her side to bend back over the map.

[ WWII AU ] a ghost story

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