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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But for a moment, he had his friend back. Not just physically, but in all matters of the soul as well. He lets Bucky tug him for the bus, and skirts around in front of him to pay the fare with the few coins in his pocket. He doesn't sit, instead choosing to hold onto one of the overhead bars so he can half-hide his face. He's too well-known. At least on the streets, you pass people. On a bus, you may be stuck with the same person staring at you for minutes too long.

He doesn't care. He just positions himself to hide Bucky's face as well as he can, and watches him quietly. He sees the struggle, knows it - not well, but enough that he's aware of it happening. And he doesn't know how to help, except to be there to pull him out of the worst of it.

His shield is suddenly heavy on his back, and he sags a little, letting the bar take his weight. Some of.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, not even certain as to why he says it. Just that it matters, in that moment.

With his hood drawn and backpack across his lap, acting as a barrier, and both arms crossed over the top of it, hiding his hands (hiding their trembling), it's difficult to see more than the edge of his profile, and their fellow passengers seem content to practice the age old art of steadfastly not looking at anyone while on the bus for fear of being stabbed or spoken to. He looks right at home in their midst, too pale against the black of his clothes, unhealthy rings under his eyes and swallowed up in his own layers, shoulders hunched defensively.

"Stop talking," he orders, but it's too quiet to have any bite. The bus is too crowded for them to keep any kind of distance, Steve is standing practically between his legs, and if he looked up from where he's keeping his gaze very intently trained on his own forearms and the floor beyond he'd be looking up right into Steve's torso.

He obliges without questioning that, either. He knows why. It's coming back, but whatever Hydra did to him-- it's enough to make it hard. He can't push. As much as he wants to grab Bucky by his shirtfront and just shake him until he remembers everything, he can't.

They're going to the Smithsonian. That has to be enough.

He shifts his fingers along the overhead bar. He's leaving slight impressions in the metal with how tightly he's gripping it.

"This is our stop."

It's a testament to how rattled he is that he simply follows Steve's lead when the bus comes to a stop, chin down and passive and unconsciously shadowing Steve by a half step. He's clearly not paying a lot of attention to where Steve's leading him, which could be into the arms of a SHIELD ambush as far as he knows.

In the stream of people exiting the bus he sticks close, avoiding being jostled a couple times by literally stepping on Steve's shadow, every line in his frame tense and defensive. He doesn't look at Steve. He looks anywhere but at him.

They stow their packs in a couple of rental lockers, although he visibly hesitates for a brief moment over leaving so much weaponry. There are porcelain knives strapped to every inch of him, however, not to mention his shielded arm, and he brushes a hand casually over a couple knives in a gesture of self reassurance before he shoves back out in front of Steve.

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icedcap - DW Comment dw_null@dreamwidth.org wrote:

And Steve leads him inside. There's no fee for this exhibit, something he finds darkly amusing, and he's quiet, sombre as he leads Bucky through the veritable maze. He pauses, once he gets to the partitioned area that pays homage to the Howling Commandos. They've even hastily redone the uniform on their 'Captain America' mannequin, but it's the faded blue jacket next to it that arrests his attention.

"See?"

He looks. Most of the information is familiar anyway, names and dates. Battlefield statistics. Experience as a unit leader. Miraculous victories accredited to the Erskine formula. He knows the names of the Howling Commandos and their specialties just as he knows the names of Avengers and theirs.

The uniform worn by James Buchanan Barnes is dutifully looked at, but there's no expression on his face as he does so, no hint of recognition or emotional impact. His eyes flicker only at the sight of the sniper rifle on display, a replica of the original, with the same professional interest he'd give to any weapon in front of him.

The exhibit is hardly as crowded as the bus had been or the sidewalk but it's still stifling, too many people glancing at the two of them. They stand out amidst the little kids and harried parents and bored tweens. A gaggle of teenage girls are outright staring and giggling to themselves, and he tenses instinctively when one of them unsubtly snaps a picture of Steve's ass with her phone.

Clearly no bells are being rung, here.

Steve doesn't need to read the plaques, doesn't need to glance over the memorabilia. He's always had a good memory. Not great, but good enough. Some things stand out more clearly in his mind than others. He can still see Bucky fall, if he closes his eyes. Is it a betrayal, not to have suspected even for a moment that he might have survived? He should have looked for him-- should have done something.

He's quiet, as Bucky moves through the gallery. He keeps step with him easily, waiting and hopeful. It wanes, as they get progress, and there's no flicker of recognition in his expression. Damn. He was so sure--

But it's not the end of the line. They can still make it happen. And he's not going to give up. "It feels a little weird," he says softly. "Being a museum exhibit. Agent Romanov called me a fossil, well. She's half right."

He glances at Steve at the mention of Black Widow and a coldness that ought to be becoming familiar steals back into his eyes. He shoves both hands into his pockets and stares unblinkingly at the girl who'd taken the picture until the giggles start to turn to anxious whispers.

"She will be looking for you," he says finally, still glaring at the girls.

He sees no point in denying it, so he doesn't. He does, however, offer a smile to those girls to counter Bucky's cold stare. Of the two of them, Steve never was the one that had the charm to assuage a crowd.

"Yeah, Buck. She will."

He turns on his heel abruptly, either offended by Steve's response to the teenagers or his answer about Widow-- or perhaps just bored of the current plaque they're standing in front of.

Then he jerks to a halt like a dog hitting the end of his leash at the tinny, echoing sound of archive footage being played in one of the other rooms. The sound of marching and buzzing electricity and voices in German underneath the narrator giving brief and extremely edited facts about the 'rogue Nazi science division,' and then the muted roar of a hundred voices saluting Hydra.

The world around him starts to tunnel. His fingers flex, his breathing picks up.

Steve is at his side instantly, one hand just above the elbow of his good arm. He knows that posture, and what it means for someone who's seen hell. Damnit, Rogers, you didn't think this one through as much as you should have, huh? "Bucky--"

"No," he says calmly, distantly, and all the tension falls out of his posture as he slips out the active cell phone he'd been holding in the pocket of his hoodie. There are coordinates glowing on the screen.

"It's time."

"Time for--" But something stops him. He glances at the cellphone, and then back up to Bucky's face. "What did you do?" It's not accusatory. It's quiet, a little pleading.

He watches Steve watch him, the expression on his face discomfiting but not enough to derail the cold satisfaction of having returned to protocol. The longer he stays out on his own, he's been told, the more things will begin to get muddled inside his head, the more he'll come into contact with variables that will compromise his mission. His priority is not always simply to deliver kill results, but to maintain his own effectiveness as an asset while doing so.

"I'm supposed to come in," he explains simply, like a child reciting something he's been told numerous times by his mother. "When I go out into the cold, I have to come back."

Nevermind that there's every possibility SHIELD will answer instead of Hydra. He's not concerned about getting caught. To date, no organization or enemy or authority has ever been able to hold him when he didn't wish to be detained, or find him when he didn't wish to be found.

Steve shifts, reaches a hand out and grips the back of Bucky's neck. He does it slowly - they're still surrounded by people - and he doesn't care who's staring or why. "We've dealt with the cold before, Buck. Remember Belgium? Worst winter in thirty years."

He should duck away-- should pull back, put distance between them, the response to his signal could come at any moment, and violently-- but there's something familiar about the touch. Something that makes him want to hold still for it and close his eyes.

(Something familiar.)

"I've never been deployed in Belgium," come out too quickly, defensive, but with a split-second glance at the wall panel to the side about James Buchanan Barnes, as if he wasn't sure of the statement.

Steve flexes his fingers, and for a moment it's all he can do just to breathe the same air. "Yes you were. We spent six weeks there. You complained about digging foxholes in--" and here he drops his voice, mimicking Bucky's accent, "'the goddamn permafrost'. I broke our only shovel because they were cheap scrap metal. I swear, we would've used grenades if we'd had the damn things, but we'd run out of just about everything but those damn K ration crackers. Everyone hated those things."

He flinches at the accent, sudden and violent, eyes flying wide as he jerks away and stares at Steve like his touch had suddenly burned.

In stammered Russian: "That's not-- I'm not--"

His gaze unsticks itself from Steve's face and pulls to the man on the glass (the man who looks just like him), and he shudders again, trying to remember the protocol (you will encounter variables in the field, you will maintain your distance, you will not allow external factors to affect you) and he swallows hard, trying to sound sure and instead sounding lost.

"I'm not."

"How long do we have?" he asks. He puts himself right back into Bucky's personal space, not quite touching but close enough, because he's already got it in his mind to fight for this man. He wants to. Bucky wouldn't give up on him, not ever. The least he can do is return the favour.

He's not going to answer that question. He's not going to give information like that to an enemy, to a SHIELD pawn--

"Six minutes."

Goddammit.

Steve drops his hand down against Bucky's wrist, the metal one, and after a moment's hesitation he laces their fingers together. Nat was the one who said that public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. It worked last time.

He tugs Bucky away from the displays, towards one of the emergency exits. The layout of this building is fairly easy to remember, he had to in order to steal the uniform. "No one I don't trust is taking you anywhere," he says firmly. The idea that it could be a compromise of his personal safety as well isn't even on the radar. But they do need to get away from all the innocents browsing the exhibits.

And he goes along when tugged, for reasons completely unknown to him. Combat instinct tells him to dig his heels in, yank back out of Steve's grasp and use the crowds to buy himself cover and distance, but the thought of Steve panicked amidst all these bystanders, standing out like a sore thumb and easy pickings for anyone with eyes, makes something in his gut twist.

He can't feel the warmth of the hand wrapped around his, although he can feel the pressure. The only people that willingly touch the arm are the scientists in charge of repairing or testing it. Everyone else knows better to put themselves in range of his grasp, when all it takes is the twitch of a nerve or a spark between wires for him to put someone through a wall.

It's that more than anything that makes him protest, back in English. The longer he goes without contact with his handlers, the greater the chance of an Incident. "But I have to come in."

"That's your training talking," Steve fires back, tugging him along as he ducks through the crowd. When they get to one of the doors that leads in behind the exhibits, he glances around and then tugs Bucky in closer so he can act as a screen while Steve breaks the lock on the door. It'll set off alarms, but he doesn't care. Maybe it'll be enough to get people out of the building.

"Bucky-- I don't know what they did to you, but I'm going to find out. And we're going to fix it. Together, you and me, okay? Just like old times." Steve shoulders the door open, and eases it shut behind both of them. "I need you to trust me."

The automatic protest dies on his tongue, mostly because there's a shadow where there shouldn't be one (sniper, rooftop) and he's got a knife in his free hand before he can even think about it, recognizing the redheaded woman watching them both coolly. SHIELD, codename Black Widow. Waiting for them, apparently. Either she'd anticipated Steve's movements, or she'd responded to his own signal faster than he'd thought possible-- or Steve had signaled her first.

He tenses in preparation for a lunge, but her eyes go to their linked hands (why hasn't he let go of Steve's hand) and something in him falters, hesitating, and she doesn't miss that, either.

"Boys."

"Natasha." Steve's voice is cautious, neutral. "I need you to stand aside."