dappered | (no subject)

[ He falls.

Not for the first or last time, but for once it is his choice to let go of the metal girder and drop, debris falling past him, the cold waters closing over his head like a nightmare. He pushes aside the things in his head that start screaming (not the water, not the cold, please no catch me stop me) and concentrates on his target, on his mission.

He pulls Rogers from the water. The man is still alive, somehow, even with the blood soaking his uniform (he knows that uniform) and he swallows hard when his hands spread automatically over the wet fabric, applying pressure (he has done this before, seen these colors underneath his fingers), and Rogers groans and curls towards him, like he knows. Like he trusts.

There is a protocol for situations like these (even though there are no situations like this, not for this target): he is to disappear, communicate his location and wait for extraction. His handlers will always come for him. He is not safe to leave at loose ends.

Hydra does not leave loose ends. Hydra does not take prisoners, though they might make an exception for a man such as this-- but his commander had asked for a confirmation of death. He has never failed to deliver one.

His left shoulder tenses and he hears the quiet screech of abused gears. He is malfunctioning. There are warm tracks of water running down his cheeks that are not from the Potomac and he can hear his own breathing, loud and wet and choked. He is crying, apparently. Or at least his body is crying, reacting to some stimuli he doesn't understand.

He closes his eyes and counts in Russian while Rogers breathes under his hands.

Twelve hours later they are in an old Hydra safehouse, a basement beneath an abandoned store front in a rough neighborhood where no one cares who walks down the street, still well stocked but hopefully overlooked in all the chaos. There are supplies enough there to treat bullet wounds and lacerations and dislocated shoulders. He is not a gifted field medic but he does not need to be, with his enhancements, and Rogers is apparently the same way, requiring only rest and time and a few IV bags to recover from injuries that would have killed an ordinary human.

He does not contact Hydra. News above ground indicates chaos and a broken chain of command, conflicting reports, and he is not at full capacity. He sits in a chair next to the only bed and works carefully on his damaged arm, patching it as best he can, listening for any change in Rogers' breathing. ]

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That's unexpected enough to register on his face. He'd just assumed... well. He'd also assumed that he'd eventually have chosen to dump his own dead weight and go his own way, leaving Steve Rogers in the dust.

"Why--"

And then it hits him mid-word, that maybe Steve can't go back because of him, that maybe they'd consider him compromised the way HYDRA has no doubt labeled him by now, and his eyes widen before he stands up so violently it shoves the chair back.

"I wouldn't." He swallows once. "I wouldn't let them make you disappear. You're not compromised. You were following your mission, tracking the shooter, and you found me. I would go with you."

He doesn't know why, but the thought of Steve throwing something important away, of being compromised on his account is awful and uncomfortable and he knows what it's like to be out in the cold without protection. Steve's not like him. He wouldn't make it.

He doesn't flinch at the flurry of motion. Instead, he sets the popsicle down on the table in its wrapper, and puts both hands on Bucky's shoulders.

"That's not it. Okay? We're not going anywhere neither of us want to. We're a team." Always have been. As much as it hurts to see Bucky acting like this, like he's expecting to be punished and to shield Steve from the same-- they have to get through it.

It's a good thing that Natasha is the one that went after Pierce. Good for him, anyway. Steve has never been in the habit of making people suffer, but for that man he'd compromise his principles after what he did to Bucky.

"But--"

The protest dies when Steve's hands settle on his shoulders, warm and solid and a little bit terrifying. It's not his place to protest, his training screams at him, but Steve had told him again and again that he doesn't have to obey training anymore, that he doesn't have to take orders. Except this still feels like a test, and from the look on Steve's face he's just failed it.

It's a visible struggle for him to think of something to say that isn't a product of protocol but he flounders towards what he hopes is the correct response in his own time, haltingly.

"If-- you don't go back. If you chose not to go back. What will you do instead?"

His mouth shapes the word 'chose' carefully, like it's a foreign word.

Steve's answer may as well be the most obvious in the world, by the way he says it. "I'll stay with you."

"With me," he repeats dubiously, trying to work out exactly what Steve means by that.

"You want me to choose the missions?"

It's not his strong point, logistics and leadership, but he can try. For Steve he would try.

Zola did this. His anger flares, he fights it down. Building Bucky up from nothing hurts, though maybe not for the expected reasons. There were people, Allied and Axis both, that would destroy beautiful buildings, Churches, statues, you name it. They'd dump corpses down wells that had sustained towns for centuries, all in the name of advancement. On both sides. It was the senseless destruction of it all that bothered him then, like it bothers him now. Bucky-- was someone he looked up to, grew up with. Seeing him changed by war was bad enough. Seeing him unmade--

He runs his fingers along the edge of the table as if searching for flaws in the wood, but finds nothing.

"There doesn't have to be any mission," he says finally. "We could travel. See the world."

He visibly catches himself before he can say the expected response, 'but why' or 'that's crazy talk, Steve Rogers,' and gropes his way towards something else.

"Is... that what you want?" he asks, watching Steve's expression closely.