Chapter Text
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- T.S. Eliot -
All he ever does is look.
Every waking moment, and sometimes in his sleep. He roams empty streets and buildings in his dreams, he looks through pixelated footage during the day, and sometimes he just runs, runs as if pure speed and effort will be rewarded.
They are not.
Days turn to weeks turn to months and the Winter Soldier has gone to ground, has disappeared like the ghost it has been for decades and lifetimes, and all he can do, the only thing he can do, is look.
So he does.
There is an astonishing amount of visual information. Tony puts him in a room with no less than nine screens and makes a few phone calls, gets access to feeds from several letter agencies and at least one police department. It is absolutely terrifying to see how much of people’s lives is recorded. In detail. He feels like an exposed nerve, looking through what Tony calls petabytes of optics , not that any part of that sentence makes sense.
His life is centered around a moment. One small moment, and a raised fist.
He dreams of falling.
He dreams of drowning.
He dreams of torn metal and wind.
Twice he tries to give his shield to Sam, Sam who just looks at him with eyes full of understanding and says, “No, Cap.”
But every time he wants to leave, wants to slink out of Stark Tower and disappear into a nameless ocean of anonymous faces and never come back up for air, he closes his eyes and thinks back to lying on that steel plate a thousand feet up in the air, of that blink of understanding, Bucky’s eyes out of the face of the Winter Soldier, and he pulls himself together and keeps searching for another day.
Somewhere out there is James Buchanan Barnes, and Steve will not let him down.
---
It goes to the museum every day. Looks at the man wearing its face and laughing, burned into seventy-year-old silver molecules. Tries to remember what it was laughing at.
Tries to remember laughing.
And then looks at the man next to it, his face open and carefree, and even past the grime of aged film stock it knows the man’s eyes are blue. Knows his hair is blond, even reflected in black and white.
It knows .
The blue eyes are fond as he looks at the man, the man wearing its face, the man who was . They stand close together, like they’re part of a whole.
It doesn’t know who it is.
But it knows who it wants to become.
---
“Tell me you’re not going to that exhibit again.”
Sam looks at Steve with that look, equal parts empathy and disappointment. Both are lethal. Steve ducks his head.
“Oh fuck, you are .” Sam rolls his eyes. And then his expression changes into something thoughtful, figuring, before he shakes his head and smiles. “Well, you’re not going alone.”
And he gets his jacket.
The city of New York and the Borough of Brooklyn have opened the Steven G. Rogers Memorial Exhibit , a counterpart to the official Howling Commandos extravaganza in DC. It’s supposed to be ‘more personal’, a ‘private look at Captain America before he became a national icon’. It’s in a modern industrial glass structure, standing in the very place where Steve and Bucky’s old brownstone apartment used to be. Or at least that’s what the exhibit’s curators claim. They’re wrong, but Steve would rather die than correct them. Steve and Bucky actually lived several blocks away, but their old building is just as torn down as the one which used to stand here. Sometimes Steve wanders past the real location, lets pain and nostalgia flood him hard as he looks at the office building their former home has become, but he never lingers. This piece of the past belongs to him, him and Bucky, and he will not share it with anyone.
Sam doesn’t say a word the whole way there, doesn’t say a word as Steve wanders around the artfully exposed brick and steel-beam rooms, looking at his old belongings mounted and lit and displayed for show and money. Looks at posters that used to hang on their walls and pictures he drew for advertisements and magazines, at pictures he drew just for Bucky because Bucky loved everything Steve made, at coffee mugs and playing cards and pieces of clothing for christ’s sake. Apparently even their goddamn military-issue sweaters are national treasures now.
There’s a box of very personal effects in a glass case under a merciless halogen light and Steve feels stripped naked every time he passes it. There’s a letter to Bucky in it. It says Dear Peggy , because all of his letters to Bucky said that, just in case anyone ever found them.
He shudders as they walk by and Sam still says nothing.
Steve is so, so grateful for it. He leads them to the projection room and they watch the film seven times in a row. It’s the same film that plays in DC.
Sam stays silent.
“Tell me about him.” They are the first words Sam says, in a diner down the street from the museum, looking at Steve from behind the rim of a cup of black coffee. “Tell me who he was.”
Who Bucky was.
Punk, pal, best friend, protector.
Courage and hope and a promise, a promise .
Brother in arms, light in the darkness, love of my life.
But Steve can’t put everything that was Bucky, everything that is Bucky into words. There are no words that will fit him. There are no words big enough.
So all he says is, “He was my friend.”
Sam looks at him like it’s not enough. Like there is a question. Steve can feel his eyes get wet and he blinks furiously while he ducks his head.
“He was my friend,” he says again, quiet and low, and then watches in horror as drops of water start to drip down on the table in front of him.
Sam pats his arm and hands him a napkin and doesn’t make him look up.
---
There is only one gurney.
In the Soldier’s dreams there are doctors in white coats, guards armed to the teeth, people in cages. Chairs with restraints and bite guards and tubes and straps. Missions and orders and the center mass of so many humans through the crosshairs of so many scopes.
But there is only one gurney. The gurney comes before it all, in a dark, empty room in a burning factory in Austria.
There is the smell of smoke and the taste of iron and the certainty of death. It is not the Soldier in these dreams, it is a person, a he , a man, and everything is dark, and everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt is numb, tied down, secured. The man can’t move. He knows he’ll never move again.
And then there is a smile.
Blue eyes and a face smeared with soot and a strange uniform and a smile the man has seen before. He knows that smile. There is the ripping sound of torn straps and then a rush of feeling, blood running back into limbs like rivers of fire and agony, but he hardly notices because of that smile, that smile , safe and familiar, and he remembers the name that comes with it.
Steve.
The Soldier wakes up and wraps the name Steve around it like a blanket. Keeps it in its heart because it’s not a name, it’s a feeling.
Home .
---
It goes on like this for days and weeks and months, the constant searching, the obsessive looking for clues — going through the metric ton of collated nationwide surveillance Tony’s AIs filter from police scanners and FBI data streams and CIA intel reports and every camera and microphone connected to the ether that can be run through facial and voice recognition; blurry pictures and pixelated footage and siphoned phone calls and snatches of random conversations. Hope springs eternal but so does disappointment in this brave new world Bucky has disappeared into, and the growing fear of failure eats away until Steve feels as dry and brittle as a last will and testament.
Because without Bucky there is no point.
He knows that now.
That’s another moment. The first moment of this new life.
Coming out of hibernation and running through hallways of steel and past walls of glass, running down the streets of an alien city and then finding himself in Times Square, Times Square , except it may as well have been the goddamn moon with the honking cabs and the blinking lights and the throngs of people and the screens no science fiction movie could possibly have predicted and the noise .
New York has never been quiet, never, but this? He couldn’t tell what half of the sounds were.
Couldn’t tell what half of the smells were.
He looked up at screens and scrolling text and billboards, lost in sensory overload, Fury’s voice ringing in his ears, and dove head-first into numbness. Separated himself from his surroundings because it was either that or go mad.
It worked well. Helped him stand up to angry gods and fight actual aliens and even make friends without losing his mind.
Until he ripped the mask off the Winter Soldier and everything stopped.
Until the end of the line.
---
On a cold, windy November day weeks and months after the Potomac, Steve finds himself on the Coney Island boardwalk. The Cyclone is long gone. There’s no one around and the wind is sharp like it was that day in the Alps and the air tastes of metal and snow. He closes his eyes and finds himself dropped straight back into a sweltering July day in 1934, standing in front of Nathan’s and counting his change.
“I got it,” Bucky says.
“No.” Steve digs through his pockets for another nickel, because he is sure he has one more, certain of it, and Bucky’s hand comes down on his wrist to stop him.
“I said I got it.” Bucky’s voice is soft. His fingers are firm. And so Steve ends up with a cheese dog with relish and they split the fries and Bucky smiles at Steve’s frown until Steve breaks and starts to laugh.
Steve opens his eyes. And there he is.
Right in front of him. Close enough to touch.
Steve stares and stares and then almost laughs because it is so Bucky not to be found but to find, find him, find Steve, the way he always has, the way he always will. The man before him looks skittish and unsure and ready to bolt, but it is not the Winter Soldier. It’s not quite Bucky either, but it is the man, not the machine.
“Do you know who I am?” he whispers.
There’s a pause. And then, “You’re Steve.”
He can hardly breathe. “I am.”
“I saw you,” says the man. “In a museum.”
Steve smiles. “No,” he says. “You know me.”
The man shakes his head and then looks up, eyes going everywhere, and then stills abruptly. Looks him straight in the eye like it’s that same sweltering day in 1934 and he’s just pulled Steve off a guy three times his size, like he’s about to give Steve the hundredth lecture about punching above his weight.
Literally.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “Yeah. I know you.” It sounds more hopeful than it does certain, but Steve will take what he can get, and hope is a good thing. It’s more than he expected to get.
“Bucky,” he whispers.
Bucky grins. It’s a tiny little quirk of the lips, but it counts. And then he says, “I have to go.”
“No.” Steve reaches out for Bucky’s arm and Bucky recoils . For a moment they stand frozen and then Steve realizes that he’s reached for Bucky’s left arm, his Winter Soldier arm, and he feels helpless.
“I have to go,” Bucky says again.
“Please.” Steve’s throat is so tight he can barely speak. “Please Bucky. Don’t go. Please.”
Bucky smiles and it’s sad and real and so Bucky that tears spring to Steve’s eyes.
“It’s not safe,” Bucky says. And then he turns slowly and walks off towards Surf Avenue and Steve stands there, stands still as a statue and doesn’t follow because it occurs to him only now why the might of the NYPD and the State Police and the US Marshal Service and the remains of SHIELD and at least three separate goddamn government agencies were so incredibly helpful in supplying petabytes of optics for his search.
He’s bait .
---
The Soldier knows Steve.
Knows.
Not in facts and figures, not in memories or experience, not in lives lived or deaths died. The Soldier doesn’t remember, can’t recall more than fragments and echoes, but it knows Steve. In the marrow of its reinforced bones, buried deep down inside where it is nothing but instinct and reflex and a last thread of hope, it knows , and something inside it shifts.
Somewhere beyond the marrow of those reinforced bones, beyond instinct and training and reflex, wrapped inside that last thread of hope, it shifts into something more than just the Soldier.
I know you.
I missed you.
I’m sorry.
I’m here.
---
Steve walks out onto the nearly empty beach, lets the wind tear at his clothes and howl past his ears, louder than the surf. He sits down on the freezing cold sand and doesn’t feel it, just watches the waves rolling ceaselessly, endlessly.
Imagines spy satellites and high-altitude drones and mounted surveillance cameras all pointing at him and almost laughs out loud and then makes a decision.
He goes straight back to Stark Tower and tells Tony that he’s moving out.
Tony starts to argue, but then he takes a look at Steve’s face, and all he ends up saying is, “Need help finding a place?”
And Steve shakes his head.
No, he doesn’t want any help.
Because if he’s going to be bait, he’s going to be the right kind.
For the right cause.
---
The man bolts upright and can’t place his location for a moment until he registers certain unique characteristics of his surroundings. Concrete underneath his body. Stars above. Wind, the smell of ozone and exhaust fumes, cars in the distance, transformer hums.
He’s on a Brooklyn rooftop. They’ve all been Brooklyn rooftops, ever since the Soldier’s head broke the surface of the Potomac, dragging 240 pounds of waterlogged star-spangled supersoldier to shore and then losing time only to come back to himself in fucking Bensonhurst of all places.
He’s been camping out on rooftops ever since. Only at night though. During the day he watches Stark Tower, trying to get glimpses of Steve.
He’s careful, wary of Stark’s perimeter, does it from far away through a scope -- the only thing he has left of his arsenal. Back when he found himself on New Utrecht he had been dressed in civilian clothing -- jeans, hoodie, work boots and gloves -- without a shred of tac gear or weapons. Except for the scope.
And a wallet belonging to one Michael Francis Witherspoon, complete with drivers license and credit cards. He has a sinking feeling that the clothes he was wearing that day also belonged to Michael Francis Witherspoon. He had thrown the wallet into a mailbox, hopes the postal service returned the wallet to its owner. There were photos inside of it, and a child’s drawing, and they deserve to find their way home.
He’d kept the cash.
It’s cold.
The money is long gone, spent on army surplus clothing and food and a blanket, but it’s winter in New York now and one blanket is not enough.
These rooftops are not enough.
He needs something more, something else, something---
something---
It’s elusive, that thing he craves, that he cannot quite grasp or even picture, but there is a need inside, a need so deep and desperate that some nights it feels like he’s going to tear open from top to bottom and bleed out on one of these goddamn brownstone rooftops. If only he knew what it was.
But whatever it is, one thing he knows for certain.
He is the lock.
And Steve is the key.
---
In the end, Sam does help him, and it’s good that he does, because Steve Rogers cannot possibly rent an apartment anywhere short of the fucking moon without drawing all kinds of unwanted attention. But Sam, Sam comes out of absolute nowhere with the social security number and ID of a recently deceased veteran. When Steve sees the name on the ID he looks at Sam for a long time.
Asks, “Are you sure?”
Sam nods with tears in his eyes and just hands everything over and this is how Steve ends up with a shoebox above a check cashing place that Tony will at least have to put effort into finding, should he choose to look. Tony said he wasn’t going to and Steve wants to believe him. He doesn’t, of course. Not him, and certainly not the might and measure of all the other eyes watching. But god -- he wants to keep this for himself. This chance to leave it all behind.
It’s 4AM when Steve leaves the Tower and slinks away through the underbelly of Grand Central and into a maze of discontinued utility tunnels, not that someone couldn’t track him through those, but he hopes, oh, he hopes . This is all he has, this and hope, and when he surfaces into the Bowery station mezzanine he feels wild laughter bubble up inside of him. He bites down on his lower lip to stifle it, but he can’t stifle the grin, so he ducks his head, pulls his baseball cap lower, and tries to tamp down on the swing in his step as he marches towards the F train.
The next morning Sam wakes up to a shield sitting at the foot of his bed.
On the shield is a note.
Don’t even try to give it back.
You know it’s yours now.
---
Steve loads up on groceries at the nearest bodega like a tourist and then doesn’t leave his new apartment for a week. The shoebox came furnished and he spends his days reading and drawing because he has a sketchbook again, and a box of really nice pencils.
He keeps drawing the same face.
---
The man wakes up in a cold sweat night after night and the need becomes worse, becomes unbearable, and Steve has left the Tower, he must have, because the man hasn’t seen him in days and it.
Hurts.
---
Steve goes up to his rooftop night after night. One of the reasons he chose this particular shoebox to live in was the plain roof without so much as a flower box, rare in Brooklyn these days.
But this space is safe, unoccupied, and as unwatched as he could get it, and so he sits here, night after night, wrapped in a blanket in an old bean bag chair, looking at the stars and waiting.
Both Bucky and the Winter Soldier would know rooftops.
He hopes one of them remembers.
---
It takes twelve days. Or rather, nights. The longest twelve nights of Steve’s life; long and cold and increasingly desperate, but on the twelfth night he stirs from a doze and there he is, silent and still as a statue before him.
“Hey,” Steve whispers, and gets up slowly, because he’s not sure which one of them he’s facing.
“Hey,” the man replies, and his voice is soft, his voice is Bucky .
Tears spring to Steve’s eyes. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The man shivers. Steve unwraps the blanket and holds it out to him. He takes it.
And then the man says, “I’m here to kidnap you.”
Steve takes a deep breath and looks at the man, steady and unflinching, and the man leans forward, clutches the seam of Steve’s jacket like he needs it to stay upright.
“I need,” says the man, and then his voice breaks and he huffs in frustration. “I need--- Steve. You’re Steve. I need to see and talk, I need ----”
He’s getting agitated, keeps exhaling in sharp, measured bursts, and Steve leans forward and covers the man’s hand in both of his. It’s cold and trembling.
“Bucky,” he says, his voice as soft and warm as he can make it, and the man looks up. Steve points to the backpack leaning against the wall next to him. “I’ll go anywhere you want with you, Buck. Anywhere at all. Just tell me where you want to go.”
And right in front of him the man’s face turns into Bucky’s and he starts to sob.
---
The Soldier doesn’t remember tears.
The man does.
---
Bucky has been glued to his side for almost three hours of subways and buses and PATH trains and finally, Amtrak. He’s been unpredictable, too, sometimes flinching, other times mumbling, mostly in languages which are very much not English. Some of it Russian, from what Steve remembers of Russian, quite a bit of it German, but most of it completely unplaceable - other than general notions of Asian and Slavic and Arabic. There’s at least one language with the kind of clicking sounds Steve associates with South Africa.
Bucky has not let go of Steve’s jacket, past turnstiles and escalators and entrances and exits, has stood close enough to maintain contact at all possible times, but apart from the muttering has not said a word, nor looked directly at Steve. For his part Steve has followed willingly, has not asked where they’re going, and has made very sure no part of his expression conveys even a hint of uncertainty. Just in case Bucky does look at him. He needs Bucky to know that he doesn’t doubt him.
Would never doubt him.
Bucky is in charge of this mission and Steve will follow wherever it leads. The train they’re currently on rumbles hard down the tracks, rattling them through as they lean against the shaking compartment wall next to an exit, and suddenly Bucky turns. Turns towards Steve. And then leans against him, tense as a bowstring, and Steve can’t stop himself, puts his arm around Bucky’s waist, holds on to him. Bucky doesn’t look up, but tics twice, a jerky motion pulling his head to the left, and then slowly and carefully leans his forehead against the zipper of Steve’s jacket. Just the zipper.
Steve has to clench his jaw to keep himself from wrapping Bucky in a full body hug, but he can’t stop himself from squeezing his hipbone.
His incredibly prominent hipbone.
Bucky is so thin .
---
He doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t understand but he doesn’t fight it, either.
Up on that rooftop his hand had reached for the hem of Steve’s jacket, almost of its own volition, like muscle memory snapping back into place after years of being out of alignment, and it closed a circuit he never even knew existed and now he can’t let go. Couldn’t let go if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to, because there’s a feeling here he cannot name, cannot place, but it’s good and warm and safe and he cannot remember ever feeling any of those and he can’t.
He can’t .
It’s that feeling he had when he first remembered the word Steve , only multiplied by a factor of ten, of a hundred, a thousand, and back on that rooftop when Steve wrapped both of his hands around Bucky’s, he’d nearly shattered with the agonizing bliss of it.
Now they’ve been traveling for hours and Steve’s hand has covered Bucky’s more times than not, and now his whole arm is wrapped around Bucky’s waist and he can feel Steve tremble a little. Bucky hasn’t looked at Steve since Brooklyn, because that feeling of warmth and safety might explode again and kill him this time, but he has to know. And so he looks up and asks.
“Are you afraid?”
Steve’s eyes are soft and warm and excruciatingly painful and the hand on Bucky’s hip stills.
“Never,” he says, and it carries such bone-deep conviction, Bucky believes him. Steve is not afraid of him. He breathes a sigh of relief.
And then realizes how tired he is.
Steve shifts in concert with Bucky’s realization, his arm tightening around Bucky’s waist like a band of iron, holding him up.
“Buck,” he says quietly. “Can’t we go sit? The car’s nearly empty, and you’ve been standing for hours.”
Bucky shudders and looks away. Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what can happen when you’re sitting boxed into a train car.
“No.” He shakes his head, wills his knees to steady. “No seats. Der sicherste Ort ist immer beim Ausgang.”
From out of the corner of his eye he can see Steve nod. “Alles klar.”
It’s only then that Bucky notices they’ve slid into German and he makes an effort to pull himself together.
“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t always notice the language.”
Steve’s arm squeezes him gently and he says, “It’s no problem.”
Bucky almost smiles. “You had more German than I, back in the day, didn’t you. Lucky you remember some of---” and then he gasps and his knees buckle and his vision grays until the only thing holding him up is Steve, because that was a memory.
A memory .
“Bucky?”
He hears Steve’s voice from very far away, but the buzzing in his ears is so loud and he’s trying to blink away the gray but it goes black and he clutches Steve’s jacket like a lifeline and then---
---
There’s really no good exit strategy for being stuck with a malfunctioning supersoldier on a train, especially when said supersoldier is passed out cold. There really is not. The only little bit of luck Steve can claim is that it’s nearly 3 AM and there is nobody to look at them suspiciously as they stand there, hugging for 45 minutes straight, until the train stops at last.
Steve hauls Bucky over his shoulder like a sack of flour and exits.
He’s the only one on the platform, a small concrete structure in the middle of nowhere, with a sign that reads Morristown and a ticket counter /waiting hall combination which is closed and locked. It’s very dark, the moon obscured by thick clouds, and for a moment Steve questions whether getting off the train was the smartest move. The wind is icy, the air smells of snow.
But really, he couldn’t hold Bucky standing up forever, and he wasn’t going to force him into a seat, not after he’d clearly told Steve not to sit and then promptly lost command of the English language. So this absolute outpost of civilization will have to do. Even if Steve has no idea where they are. Doesn’t even know what state they’re in.
He leaves the platform and walks through the parking lot, idly contemplating hotwiring a car. But he has seen cars today, even the regular, non-Avenger road vehicles, full of computers and complicated electronics, and concedes that getting today’s cars to start without a key is very, very different from holding a battery wire and a screwdriver against an engine block, which is how they used to do it back in occupied territory.
He sighs. This century is complicated and confusing.
Bucky is still unconscious, heavier than Steve anticipated, and he wonders how much the arm weighs. Physically.
And mentally.
The street behind the parking lot is deserted, but there are lights and neon signs -- a gas station (closed), a supermarket (also closed), a bar (definitely closed). And way off in the distance, something flashes.
Vacancy .
---
Bucky wakes up warm.
Warm and hazy and----
and----
The right word eludes him, but he’s in a bed, an actual bed, and there’s a body at his back giving off heat like a furnace, and weak winter sunshine filtering through the closed curtains. The only sounds are an occasional car passing and the deep, regular breathing behind him.
He has never been this relaxed. And he is so, so tired.
His eyes close and he lets himself slide back down into warmth and whatever that feeling is that he can’t name.
---
Steve fights himself for almost half an hour before he finally decides that he has to go get supplies. He writes Bucky a note -- PLEASE STAY HERE, I’LL BE RIGHT BACK -- on the biggest piece of paper he can find (the room’s channel listings), and sticks it to the door. There is no scotch tape. He pricks his thumb with a safety pin and uses his blood. Blood is sticky.
Then he runs, runs at top speed, baffled looks be damned, as he hits a drugstore, a diner, and a cash machine in short succession, using an ATM card and an ID proclaiming him to be Riley G. Armstrong. The same Riley G. Armstrong who rents the Brooklyn apartment. He owes Sam so much.
They will have to get new IDs soon, both of them, but-- one step at a time. He withdraws as much cash as the ATM will let him and runs back to the motel.
One very fast step at a time.
He bursts through the motel room door in a full-fledged panic, doesn’t even pretend not to be absolutely strangled by a suffocating fist of icy terror, and finds Bucky sitting calmly on the bed, holding his note, carefully running his finger across the spot of red at the top.
“Hey Steve,” he says, looking up and smiling . Then he holds up the note. “Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t bleed on at least one surface.”
If Steve weren’t a goddamn enhanced supersoldier with redundant body functions and healing factors and a metabolism that’s cranked up higher than the Empire State Building, he would faint on the spot. As it is, he closes and then very casually leans back against the door until his knees stop trying to buckle.
But tears once again spring to his eyes and he lets them.
“Steve?” Bucky’s voice sounds tentative now, figuring, and Steve pulls himself together with truly superhuman effort and smiles back.
“Hey,” he says, and puts his bags on the small table. “I got us food.”
Bucky gets up and walks over and stops dead in his tracks as Steve opens the first container. It’s a hotdog, covered with onions and relish and ketchup and absolutely no mustard, a side of cheesy curly fries, and two large dill pickles, because Bucky used to order this exact combo everywhere he went and Steve couldn’t help himself back at that diner. Now Bucky’s staring at the food, shaking slightly, and then he looks up and says, “You got my favorite.” as if this is something he and Steve have been doing for years, and it is, or at least it was , and it fucking should have been, and Steve can’t not take the two steps to close the gap between them and wrap his arms around Bucky, who burrows into him, buries his face in Steve’s neck and just breathes, and goddammit, Steve might really cry this time.
Suddenly Bucky goes stiff as a board in Steve’s arms, yanks himself back hard and shouts, “ Stillgestanden! ” His eyes start to dart around, and he’s shaking in a whole different way now; there is tension in his muscles and a hard set to his jaw and Steve stays very still.
The Soldier is front and center.
“Kакие у меня приказы.” It comes out harsh, rasping, and the Soldier’s eyes focus on Steve, narrow and hard as flint. “Які мої накази.” Demanding. “ Care sunt comenzile mele .” Menacing.
Steve takes a deep breath and says, “Bucky.”
The Soldier blinks. “ما هي أوامري”
“Bucky,” Steve whispers. “I don’t know what to do.”
The Soldier’s left fist comes out of nowhere, so fast even Steve’s reflexes can’t compensate, and it punches with devastating efficiency. Steve feels his cheekbone crack as the metal gives way and pain explodes through his right side, stars burst across his vision, and he fights to stay conscious. He swallows hard, tastes nothing but blood and iron. The Soldier’s right hand hits his solar plexus, again with flawless precision, and it immobilizes him for a full ten seconds, enough for the metal hand to wrap around his throat and lift him off his feet, pinning him against the wall, bringing his face in so close, they’re almost touching.
His eyes are empty.
His voice is a hiss.
“បញ្ជាក់បេសកកម្មរបស់អ្នក,” he says. Clearly out of patience. “ Comply .”
It’s getting hard to breathe, but Steve puts everything he has into staying calm and focusing and looking straight at the Soldier, and then goes for a Hail Mary.
“Stand down,” he rasps, with as much authority as being strangled against a wall will let him muster. “Stand DOWN .”
The metal fingers let go abruptly and the Soldier takes a step back and without so much as a blink he’s Bucky again, grinning at the food and saying, “Let’s eat.”
Steve shakes his head and regrets it immediately, because healing factor or no, his head is about to explode, but he sits down across from Bucky and watches him dig in with gusto, and he’s glad .
Food is good. One fucking step at a time.
Then, halfway through his hot dog, Bucky looks up and frowns, lets his hand drop slowly as he studies Steve’s face. His brows furrow as he stares at Steve’s right eye, which surely is a symphony of black and blue by now, at his neck which is probably no better, and his expression becomes pinched.
“Are you hurt?” His voice is soft and low and so fucking 1943.
Steve takes a deep breath. Which hurts as much as his head does. “It’s nothing, Bucky. It’ll be gone in a few hours.”
“I lost time, didn’t I.” It comes out even, matter-of-fact.
Steve nods.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky says quietly. “It happens.” He looks up again, his expression unreadable. “You still want to come with me?”
Steve nods again.
“I might kill you.” There’s a wobble in Bucky’s voice now, sorrow and strain.
“Bucky,” Steve says, and reaches out to cover his right hand, trembling on the table. “There’s just you and me. There’s nothing else.”
And Bucky gets up, his eyes bright and shiny, pulls Steve out of his chair and wraps his arms around him and Steve hugs him back because there is no world in which he’ll leave Bucky to fight his battles alone, least of all this one. Bucky’s face is once again buried in the crook of Steve’s neck and he breathes him in, and then Bucky’s lips move, just a whisper, next to Steve’s ear. “To the end of the line?”
And Steve tightens his arms, buries his nose in Bucky’s hair, and says, “To the end of the line, Buck. To the end of every line.”
---
Bucky feels Steve’s arms around him like a shield--- between Bucky and the world, between Bucky and all the things which don’t yet make sense, between Bucky and the Soldier. He feels Steve’s cheek against the back of his neck and then Steve exhales a long breath that sounds like he’s been holding it forever, and it gives a very faint whistle.
A very faint whistle.
Steve’s lungs used to---
Suddenly Bucky is back in the kitchen of a drafty Flatbush tenement, standing in the near dark, waiting for Steve, who should be home . Staring at the front door as if he can will Steve to enter, while outside snow is falling for the third day in a row. Worry sits in the pit of his stomach like a knot of misery. A key finally scrapes the lock and Steve walks in, a mass of wool and felt and a canvas bag, his eyes glassy and his lungs doing that harsh rattle that says Steve is almost out of air.
Bucky wants to scream at him. He wants to scream and yell and pick Steve up and shake him till he rattles more than his traitorous lungs, but he does none of it, because Steve looks so fucking miserable and cold and exhausted, god damn him. Instead he hands Steve the asthma pills and peels off most of his layers and then pulls him into the bedroom, kicks off both of their shoes, and wraps himself around that stupid, skinny, shivering body that means more to him than Steve will ever know, because if Steve did know, he wouldn’t be so fucking careless with something so important to Bucky.
Bucky looks up.
Steve is here .
“You got pneumonia in ‘41,” he says. “I had to haul you to Victory Memorial in the middle of the night.”
Steve pulls back and looks at him in wonder, his eyes soft and painfully raw. “You lugged me over your shoulder half of the way,” he whispers. “I kept telling you I could walk on my own.”
“The hell you coulda,” Bucky says. “Your lips were purple . You spent that whole goddamn day outside, doing who knows what---”
“I was painting Mr. Leibowitz’ deli sign. Earning money .” Steve’s voice is full of indignation, his accent broad and soupy, vowels stretched around reluctant consonants. “I wasn’t going to sit home like a spoiled fucking princess while you tried to make rent working the damn docks.”
Steve is glaring at him with the exact same expression he had every time he told Bucky off for trying to stop Steve from pulling his weight, and Bucky knows this, he knows this, and he throws his head back and laughs out loud.
Steve looks at him like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen and says, “You’re a pain in my ass, Buck.”
Bucky laughs louder.
---
“Where are we, anyway?”
Bucky stills and his posture changes. It’s subtle, but Steve can see it and it hurts . He sighs. “The train station sign said Morristown. Not entirely sure what state we’re in. Not entirely sure what train we got on.”
Bucky scratches his head and bites his lip.
“Did you have a destination?” Steve asks softly. “Or did you just want us to get out?”
Bucky frowns. “We’re still in New York State. Train was for Utica,” he says, the Bucky bleeding out and leaving behind the man from the roof. “I had a safe house upstate, back in the 80s, near North Lake. In the Black River Wild Forest.” His voice is uncertain now, hesitant. “Thought maybe I could take you there?”
Steve nods, forces himself to be calm and open and not howl in frustration that the Bucky from five minutes ago has vanished into thin air.
“Of course,” he says, makes his voice soft, sincere. “We can go anywhere you want. But--- will it actually be safe? With all of Hydra’s data floating free around the internet?”
Bucky smiles a crooked little smile. “You’re not a hundred percent up on the digital language yet, are you.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Give me a break, Buck. I was busy being frozen while you learned all the new stuff.”
Bucky sighs. “I was frozen, too. For a lot of the time.”
And now Steve wants to kick himself. It must show on his face, because Bucky reaches out, rubs Steve’s arm and says, “It’s OK. Don’t feel bad.”
And just like that, he’s Bucky again. Ready to protect Steve at all costs, even from himself. Steve can feel his eyes get wet yet again, but man, this is a fucking rollercoaster, and the odds are, it will get worse before it gets better. Not that he’s getting off this ride, ever.
“It was off the books,” Bucky says. “The safehouse. Not something Hydra owned. It was an unexpected necessity.” He shrugs. “Missions had some autonomy. You know battles are always fluid situations.”
Steve nods.
“So I had to be able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances on the spot, and this safe house was one of those unforeseen circumstances. I needed a place to lie low for a while.”
“Why?”
Bucky looks at him for a long time, “I got shot up a bit. Needed a little time to heal and regroup before I could complete my mission.” His expression is open as his mouth twitches in self-deprecation and all Steve wants to do is wrap his arms around him until they’re one person.
Instead he says, “I got us supplies.” He points to the rest of the bags. “Toiletries. Hair dye. Clothes for you.” He walks over to his backpack, opens it and pulls out a clean t-shirt and underwear. “I couldn’t get everything, you’ll have to share some of mine.”
Bucky’s eyes follow him wordlessly as Steve starts to make a pile. Then he dumps the plastic bags onto the bed and looks through the contents. Holds up the cargo pants and the sweater Steve bought for him, looks at the socks and the shampoo and the soap, and finally gets to the baseball cap.
“The Yankees ?”
“It’s all they had,” Steve says. “And it turns out the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957.”
Bucky stares at him.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “This century just sucks.”
---
37 hours later, two men in a ratty old Toyota with Canadian plates pull up at a ramshackle cabin in the middle of an upstate New York forest, near a lake. They circle the structure twice in opposing concentric circles, checking the perimeter, each with a gun drawn and ready. Then they enter the cabin as if breaching a hostile structure, securing every one of its three rooms thoroughly, including the bathroom. When they find nothing but spider webs and small animal spoor, they smile.
Then they unload the car. It takes a little while.
When they are finished, the man in the Yankees cap starts to check faucets and power lines and breaker boxes. After a thumbs up, the other man, recently-dyed brown hair tucked under a black beanie, nods and gets back in the car. He drives for almost five miles before he pulls off the dirt road and a little ways into the underbrush, and then covers the car with branches.
He carves signs into several trees on his way back to the dirt road, and then starts to walk back to the cabin.
Above him the sky gets dark, and it begins to snow.