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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"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.