dappered | (no subject)

(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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He does watch, stilling his own work to do so. Part of it is clinical threat assessment but another part is some tiny flare of curiosity. He's never fought someone like him before.

He waits until Rogers is looking back at him before jerking his head minutely at a cabinet in the corner. There are nondescript civilian clothes inside, white and gray shirts and khakis, socks and boxers, and some of them might even fit Steve.

There's also a tiny bathroom just past the cabinet with the door missing. The shower has a curtain for some privacy but it's all clearly been set up so that a captor could easily keep an eye on a prisoner.

The soldering iron starts up again, but he keeps a wary eye on Rogers anyway.

"Thank you." He doesn't have to say it, but he does. And then he pads over to the indicated area, selects a handful of clothing that he estimates he can manage with, and ducks into the bathroom. He wants to shower, but the dressings should stay in place a while longer, and he eschews the idea. Cleans himself up instead, washes his hands, stares at the man in the splintered mirror. He's got two days' growth of non-regulation stubble, and he barely recognizes his own eyes. He considers looking or asking for a razor, but Bucky doesn't look like he's seen one in decades. What could a man like them do with one? He doesn't want to dwell on it too deeply.

He comes back dressed, and not a move he makes belies the injuries he's suffered. The shield is nearby, a part of him in so many ways, but he doesn't even try to pick it up. It sank to the bottom of the Potomac, there's only so many ways it could have been retrieved. He skims his fingers across the knuckles of his opposite hand, and then he sinks down onto his haunches in front of where Bucky's working. He knows he has to be gentle. Bucky's a veteran of more than just war. "Can I help? With that?" He nods to the arm.

The automatic response ought to be 'no.' The arm is HYDRA and classified to boot, there are only certain techs and scientists with clearance to open up the paneling and look inside.

"Why?" he asks instead, every muscle tensed in case Rogers made a grab for the iron or any of the other tools to use as weapons.

His breath hitches, and his brows draw down, as he tries to smile to cover up entirely too many feelings. "You patched me up," he says, reaching up to his shoulder. The stitchwork was neat and precise. Bucky used to darn his own socks in the war. It was a valuable skill back then.

Now, people just throw their clothing away when it gets ripped or torn. People make fun of Steve for continuing the tradition, but he sees no reason to waste fabric men and women would have killed for less than a century ago. Men used to keep their parachutes and send them back home to their girlfriends, in the hopes they could turn the silk into a wedding gown.

"I'd like to return the favour."

"That isn't why."

The confusion drops off his face like a switch had been pressed, his voice abruptly flat and cold and as empty as his eyes. He can't say he's unfamiliar with targets trying to appeal to his better nature, his humanity, because people will say and do anything in the moments before death, but it's never sparked a physical reaction in him before and he can only take that as an attack. Something to defend himself from.

This man keeps looking at him like the very sight of his face causes pain, like every word he says or move he makes is ...wrong, somehow, a disappointment. A failed test. He doesn't know what to do with that, but he knows he doesn't like it.

He says nothing. He could say a thousand things, refute the point or strengthen it, but he does neither. Instead, he stands, removing himself from Bucky's immediate space. He wants to help, and won't stop trying, but he knows when not to push. Especially when so many others have, and he's... worried, that Bucky might be near to his breaking point.

"Well, you know where I am if you change your mind." He circles around, back to the hospital bed, but he's loathe to get back into it, and there are no other chairs. His fingers curl across the dressing over the wound just below his sternum, and he calculates how much physical activity he could manage before he'd tear it open again. Lucky, that it went straight through, even if he has suspicions about why his thigh's healing up so well. The slug was pulled out.

Curiously, "Am I a prisoner?"

The tension eases out of his shoulders when Rogers moves away, although he never actually moves a muscle, still holding the iron to the open circuitry of his arm. It's not ideal to fight with the inner workings exposed like this, but that consideration won't stop him from doing so.

He watches Rogers for a full minute before dropping his gaze back to his work, apparently satisfied with him backing off. The question, though, makes his brow knit briefly.

"...yes."

Except HYDRA doesn't take prisoners. Neither does an assassin. And he's already violated protocol by staying so long underground without contact, without allowing his handlers to take the situation over and make the necessary decisions.

Steve makes a quiet, enlightened sort of noise, almost an oh, and sits himself on the edge of the hospital bed. This time, he's facing Bucky, and has his hands braced on his knees. "All right. Is there anything you'd like to ask me?"

Because volunteering for interrogation is definitely the best idea he's had since waking.

There's an even longer pause this time, and if it wasn't completely obvious before that he's never had to take a prisoner or lead an interrogation in his life, it would be now in the way he hesitates and tries to come up with a valid response.

(There are a thousand questions he wants to ask but he's not allowed, asking questions leads to the room and the chair and the sound of his own screams in his ears, he doesn't need to know, he doesn't need to know).

"Tell me about the man on the helicarrier. The one with wings."

He'd been given some intel about Fury, about Rogers himself, about the Black Widow and the people that were likely to stand in his way. The man with wings is an unknown variable, even if he hadn't seemed much of a physical threat, but he doesn't know who he is to Rogers.

"We call him Falcon. He's a former member of the American military, specifically the air force. Anything more than that is classified. I'm sorry." And he is. Because although the Bucky he knows would sooner die than betray a brother-in-arms, the man he knew and the one before him now have different ideals. He wants to tell him everything, but some secrets don't belong to him.

"Why did he come with you? He's not SHIELD-- he wasn't assigned to you."

It's actually kind of a stupid question, he realizes as he hears it said aloud. An ex-soldier or even a random civilian might have chosen to accompany Rogers for any number of reasons, up to and including self-preservation or sheer utility.

"Because all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," Steve says quietly, looking away. He and Erskine had discussed that philosophy at length during one of their many late-night sessions. He could have said it more simply - that Sam, like him, doesn't appreciate bullies. But Hydra is evil, no matter the good intentions its members exposit. "He saw that Agent Romanov and I needed help to stop Hydra, and he stepped up. As did countless others in the Triskelion."

"He'll come looking for you."

It's said with a note of confirmation, as if Steve had answered that particular question. The soldering iron cuts off and he's snapping the paneling back in place on his arm, flexing the fingers to work out any kinks and all with an air of re-arming, readying himself for a newly acquired target.

"That's what friends do." He keeps his voice gentle. He didn't have time to look for Bucky's body after the wreck, but-- he's been back to that stretch of track a few times since they woke him up out of cryosleep. Some part of him, small and foolish, hoped for closure. A body. Something. Now he knows why he never found anything.

"But he's not a threat." Because if Bucky - if the Winter Soldier part of Bucky thinks he is, it'll mean trouble for Sam. And Steve never has been good at defusing bombs. "He's not like us. You searched me," he adds thoughtfully. He woke up all but naked, and his uniform is nowhere to be seen. "You know I don't have any tracking devices on me."

He cuts Rogers a look that might have been exasperation, in another life and on another man's face. "They don't put trackers on you. In you."

Again, it's like a blow. His knuckles turn white where he's gripping his thighs, because it sounds so much like Bucky and that expression is so similar, but the sentiment is wrong. Bucky never had cause to be paranoid about subcutaneous tracking devices. They didn't even have the darn things back then.

"I'm aware. But if I'm not mistaken, you checked for those, too."

"You don't scar."

It should be flat or even slightly frustrated (of course he checked, but he hardly has the equipment here for anything except a visual scan) but is instead the slightest bit hesitant, even curious.

"No." Is it selfish, to wish sometimes that he did? "But I'm not chipped. I've checked." Or more specifically, he asked Stark to check. Tony has no reason to lie to him, not about that, and he doesn't think there's anyone alive who could hide anything technological from that man. He'd laid down on one of Stark's work tables as the man tut-tutted at him and asked him if this meant the boyscout was becoming disillusioned.

Steve had ignored the quip at the time, but he did thank Stark afterwards, and Tony's mouth had been an uncharacteristically straight line as he'd replied, you don't need to thank me, Captain.

"Did they tell you anything about me?"

He eyes Steve for a moment, gauging his sincerity (not that he needs to, something in him knows that if this man says something it is because he believes it whole-heartedly) before allowing his gaze to slide away, as good as a shrug in a person with actual expressions.

"Yes." Of course they had. Strengths, weaknesses, habits. "You were tagged as my primary obstacle."

Was it arrogance, he wonders? Did they want to see how their soldier measured up against him? Did they think, somehow, that Steve wouldn't recognize him, that he wouldn't fight for him?

His mouth thins into a frown. Hydra never has been very smart. And in this, they miscalculated.

"Your mission," he says, reaching up to make a small throw-away gesture near his temple. "I remember. But I mean more like... about the War." There is always only one War for men like him, and even in quiet narrative it always manages a capital letter. "My Commandos. Any of that."

He isn't quite sure what Rogers is asking him, and more importantly not sure why he's answering in the first place. He'd read and memorized all the files that had been provided to him, as any operative would.

"You have no personal connections to the people of this time period," he answers, eyes narrowed. "Save for one Carter, Margaret, retired operative. The Director of SHIELD provides you with missions and recurring comrades to encourage your loyalty, but intel from your Strike team indicates you remain voluntarily isolated. You are the most vulnerable member of the Avengers Initiative."

Edited 2014-04-14 00:16 (UTC)

He snorts faintly. It's not untrue, but it cuts him just the same. He can feel camaraderie for the Avengers (he hates that name) but they aren't his comrades. Everyone he could have called by that name once upon a time is dead and buried - he's been to their graves - save Peggy and Bucky.

He drums out a tattoo against his thigh (it's the peppy themesong they wrote for him during the war) and looks down at his hands as if he's not quite sure they were what he was expecting to see. "Vulnerable. I can see why Hydra would say that." He's not bulletproof like Banner or Thor, and he's not a genius in Stark's calibre. But he and Natasha and Barton represent something that the others don't, and there's no trace of ego in thinking it.

"I want to take you somewhere. I won't fight, you have my word. But I'd like to go to the Smithsonian, and show you something."

That seems like an odd change of subject and his face goes almost comically blank while he tries to decipher the request, running down motives and scenarios, and in the end he doesn't even have to reply, just knits his brows once more in clear confusion.

Does Bucky even know what the Smithsonian is? Steve watches the way his expressions twist and change, and his jaw tenses at all the things he's used to seeing.

"It's an exhibit. It details my team in the Second World War. I think you should see it." It bothers him, to think of the men he served with being relegated to a dusty exhibit. But there are precious few other ways to keep the memories alive. "Bucky-- please."

That name again. His shoulders tense up again tellingly under the tanktop, the mechanics in his arm whirring softly to compensate, and he puts his flesh hand to his temple sharply, rubbing at it, a very human and un-Winter Soldier gesture.

"You're a prisoner," he reminds Steve flatly, in case he'd forgotten their roles here. Prisoners don't ask to take their captors to museum exhibits.

On the other hand he should have told Rogers 'no' immediately, instead of hesitating and obviously thinking about it. The fact that it's been several days and he hasn't already conducted them both into HYDRA's custody is also telling.