dappered | (no subject)

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[ 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 nods once, brisk, accepting the mission, and then gives Steve a flat sort of look before opening the SUV's backdoor instead and climbing in, going straight for the equipment, weapons and reconnaissance, stashed there like he knows what kind of super spy gadgets come standard in a SHIELD vehicle. If Steve is driving, someone needs to be watching out the rear window with a machine gun.

Deep breath. He shuts the door, circles to the driver's side. Part of him wants to redline the vehicle until he blows the transmission, but the other part hears walk, don't run over and over like a mantra. He obeys all the traffic laws, stops at cross-walks, signals for 2.5 seconds before he pulls into other lanes. Gradually, the urban streets fade to warehouses and shops, and then they become intermittent. Sparse.

He has it in his mind to drive to the next big city, but they need to lie low. He'll contact Stark in a few days and beg a favour (there's no one else he'd do it for but Bucky) and maybe they can disappear to-- somewhere, anywhere else. But in the immediate future, they need a nondescript hotel off the grid, a room paid full in cash, and time. God, they need seventy years of it.

The hotel, they get, in a middling size town not on the way to anywhere in particular. The room, they get, small and quiet but clean, and the desk clerk doesn't even look up from his newspaper when they check in with the money Natasha had stashed in the car-- which Steve optimistically (and laughably) hopes is not stolen. They both wear sunglasses and hats and hoodies like disreputable twenty-somethings, hiding behind unfolding maps and cellphones, Big Gulp drinks from the gas stations and anything else that comes easily to hand.

The Winter Soldier doesn't blend naturally with other people but he succeeds by effort rather than natural inclination, treating it like any mission, wearing headphones that aren't actually plugged into anything to minimize unwanted social contact, hair tied back in a ponytail and hands shoved into his pockets. He's quiet during the car rides and quiet when they stop, although Steve's getting disconcertingly good at translating his silences.

After the first twenty-four hours it's clear neither SHIELD nor Hydra are overtly pursuing them, and he spends a little less time checking their six and a little more time watching Steve, brow faintly furrowed like Steve is a puzzle he needs to solve. There's no pretense of anyone being anyone's prisoner anymore. Steve is leading and he's following, though he's well aware of every opportunity to escape that he doesn't use. Every time Steve's gaze moves off him, every time he's left by himself, every time they stop for the night. A thousand exit routes present themselves to him and he ignores them, one by one. Steve allows him a thousand vulnerabilities, a thousand blind spots and he ignores them all, clenches his jaw until the impulse to finish what he'd started passes.

He's more free with his own vulnerabilities than he can ever remember being, as well, although that doesn't really mean much. Steve's seen where he keeps all his knives by now, seen which guns he gravitates to, watches him watch exits and always seems to know, every single time, how and when to do that awful thing where he'll rest a hand on the back of his neck and squeeze gently, and it makes him seize up every time like Steve is pulling some string in his body. It feels good. It feels right, and it shouldn't, and whenever Steve asks him if it's too much, if he'd rather not be touched he can never figure out how he wants to answer.

He asks Steve halting, non-sequitur questions about Natasha Romanoff (Natalia Romanova) sometimes, most of which Steve doesn't even know the answers to and seems surprised that he'd ask in the first place, and he shrugs his shoulders jerkily when Steve apologizes for not having any of the answers. He's not sure he doesn't already know the answers. There's just something inside him that wants to hear the questions asked aloud, knowing that he can.

They're stopped for the day on account of it being too goddamned hot and bright to drive any further in a heat-soaking tin can, mirage shimmers on the pavement and all sane people squirreled away in any place that has air conditioning. His hair is still damp from a cold shower when he slips back out into the main part of their room, all his layers gone except for a black tank and sweatpants, his metal arm for the very first time detached and laid out in several pieces on the table to be worked on. He's never taken it off in Steve's presence yet so far, forever paranoid, but it and the ports at his shoulder need maintenance just like any of his weapons.

He'd waited until Steve left the room to grab some supplies, at least, although part of him knows very well that there's no chance of him being finished before Steve returns.

He still wears the cuffs. Bucky would take them off if he asked, he knows that now, but he leaves them. It's a gesture of trust, one of many he extends and hopes is enough to bring him back to who he was and who he used to be. He still wears them, and calls them a fashion sense in some ironic part of his mind, although he wears long-sleeved shirts so they don't show unless he's around Bucky, and rolls the edges of his sleeves up.

Supplies are the easy part. He stops at gas stations that double as mini-marts and buys everything in cash, spreading his purchases out over several different ones in a radius around their newest hotel. Recon.

Old habits, and all.

He tries to think about having his friend back, about the moments when Bucky looks at him like he remembers an old joke, and not about the way his lips felt once upon a time.

He tries.

He buys popsicles that he wraps and puts carefully in a flimsy styrofoam cooler under twenty pounds of ice that he plans on dumping in the bathtub later to cool the room down, and he drives back slowly in an effort to avoid undue attention. They've been off the grid so far, but that doesn't mean they'll stay that way. But eventually he's back at their room, and he hauls their supplies inside, locks the door behind him (swingbolt first, deadbolt second) and he stocks their small fridge, dumps out the ice as planned, and holds out one of the popsicles to Bucky. If seeing the arm in pieces on the table startles him, it doesn't show. "I remember when these things had flavour," he says with an amused shake of his head. "Now I think the only thing you can taste is the colour."

This would be yet again one of those situations that the Winter Soldier has no frame of reference for, tensed at the prospect of scrutiny and then looking comically blank as he tries to parse Steve's Steve-ness.

He blinks at the popsicle, glances up at Steve almost too quickly to catch (for permission, always permission before he remembers that he doesn't need any, and certainly not from someone who'd been a target), and then looks back at the popsicle before reaching out gingerly to take it with his remaining hand like it might be explosive, and everything in his silence screams the obvious questions: why are you doing this, what made you think a super assassin would want one of these, did you really have to get the Captain American red-white-and-blue kind, really.

"They were a luxury once upon a time, you know," he says as he leans against the edge of the table. "And there's ice in the bathtub." You know, in case he missed the cascading rattle as Steve dumped twenty solid pounds into it. "It'll keep the temperature down in here."

Yes he did notice that, in point of fact, and in response sticks the red tip of the popsicle in his mouth, dismissing Captain Obvious as clearly as if he'd rolled his eyes.

It's hard to imagine these as a luxury (not the way he knows deep in his gut about things like hot water, butter, fresh meat) but he mouths at it obligingly anyway, turning his tongue and lips red before he figures out he can hold it in his teeth for moments at a time while he goes back to work on the cybernetic arm.

"Do you need--" a hand. He bites down on it, as unintentional a quip as it might have been, it's not warranted here. He clears his throat. "Help?"

A day or two ago, he'd have given Steve a flat stare for asking. A week ago-- well, a week ago they'd been trying to kill each other.

He delicately takes the popsicle between his teeth and slowly, possibly even grudgingly picks up a small bottle of chemical solution that looks like an uncomfortable cross between blood and motor oil, which is more or less what it is. The arm is easy enough to deal with when it's detached, but even the Winter Soldier can't accurately see all the machinery in his shoulder port without a mirror. He gestures wordlessly with the tip of the squeeze bottle at the two dozen places on the port that need to be done before holding it up for Steve.

He takes it, wordless, unwraps his own popsicle and clamps it between his teeth when he needs both hands. The arm doesn't make him flinch. Do you know when a guy gets hit by a shell and it kills him, you're as like as not to find body parts in the trees around him as anywhere else you'd think to look?

But he has to wonder if they used anesthetic when they fitted it to his shoulder, and he doubts it. His fingers clench a little too tightly around the bottle as he works.

With Steve sitting so close it's impossible not to read him; the way his jaw clenches, the set of his shoulders, the line of his brows. And as has been happening all too often of late, he finds himself looking, subtly and then less subtly, until he's not working on the arm at all but watching Steve quietly, eyes dark.

"I can't remember," he says softly to whatever question Steve is asking inside his own head right now, do you remember what happened or do you miss it or even did you choose to keep this, did you let them turn you into a weapon. It could answer any of those, except that it's a lie. He has four variations of 'I can't remember'/'I don't know.' The first is flat and cold and angry at Steve for asking. The second is panicked, an excuse to make Steve stop talking, if he can't remember something then he doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to deal with the reality of it. The third is guilty, soft and helpless, do you like coffee? or burgers or hot dogs?

The fourth is new, having appeared only recently. The soft and calm version, when he remembers perfectly well but doesn't want Steve to hear him say so, and looks at him with dark eyes and something approaching concern.

It's the same tone of voice that Bucky Barnes used to have when he'd grip Steve's shoulder or pull him in, take his face with both hands and turn him away from the whateveritwas. A soldier shot dead a foot from cover. A story about a girl raped on the street, or a child frozen in the snow. The men that weren't as lucky as James Buchanan Barnes, Hydra POW. The camps. The gas.

'Sometimes things just happen,' he used to say, knowing otherwise but not wanting Steve to hear him say it, watching him with dark eyes and concern on his face.

Edited 2014-04-25 03:30 (UTC)

Bucky always could read his mind. They used to operate synergistically, barely needing to talk in a fight. It was bad when they were kids, Hell, but they were devils in combat. The other Commandos never commented on it much, but Steve could read the incredulous admiration in their expressions whenever they did something perfectly in sync without even looking at each other first. Steve throwing Bucky over a barricade, Bucky throwing live German grenade - called potato mashers - at his shield so he could fling it away from their squad. People rarely said their names without including each other, it was never just Captain America, it was Cap and Sergeant Barnes, or Steve and Bucky.

So although he frowns, the statement hardly unnerves him. If anything, it's a show of progress. He rests his hand against Bucky's shoulder, just beyond the implanted metal against the skin, and his fingers tighten briefly. "It's not your fault, Buck."

That's a very Steve Rogers thing to say, he thinks, even based on limited acquaintance (except no, not really) and the intel he'd gotten out of a briefing. He glances down to the arm on the table, lashes hiding his eyes.

"You don't know that," he says neutrally.

"I do," he says, putting the not-inconsiderable force of all his conviction behind it. "I know you." And he knows that there's a reason they had to brainwash him to get him to capitulate. The man he is, the man he was would never condone what Hydra's done to the world.

"I shot your commander."

And you, he doesn't say, looking back up to meet Steve's gaze, watching him carefully even as he fails to shrug out from under the other man's touch. There's still no accusation or defensiveness in his voice. He's interested (and maybe a little bit terrified, honestly) in the sentiment that would prompt a soldier, the nominal leader of the Avengers themselves, to put so much faith in a ghost.

"You're not the first one to have done so," he says mildly. It's still a secret, that Fury's alive, and he doesn't intend to compromise it outright. Not even for Bucky. "This line of work is a risk for all of us. It's one we all choose to take. Fury knew that."

His lips thin unconsciously, reacting to something in that. The present tense usage, perhaps, implying that Steve is still part of SHIELD, or even just the implication that he and Fury are at all in the same category. He looks back down at the metal arm and deliberately begins his work again.

"And you chose this freely?" he asks, a little less than neutral. "Your work with SHIELD?"

A smile flickers briefly on his face, notable only for its grimness. "I did. But the more time I've had to think about it, the more I don't think I'm going back." It pains him to think that the organization Peggy and Howard worked to build could have amounted to so little in the end. That the parasite of Hydra thrived in its soul for decades, unchecked and unchallenged.

And part of him isn't entirely certain that Nick Fury failed to realize its growth.

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.

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