Cap vignette: Vise
So that Ant-Man post-credits scene we weren't supposed to see before tomorrow....
Vise
3200 words | PG-ish | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Scott Lang
Steve has, for better or for worse, accepted that Bucky doesn't want to be found. Accepted that continuing to chase after him is not only a waste of time and energy and resources and Sam's vacation days, but also a clear announcement to Bucky that Steve isn't interested in respecting his wishes or his agency. This isn't some romance and Bucky's not playing hard-to-get; for whatever reason -- and there are many possible ones and all of them break Steve's heart -- Bucky doesn't want to be around him right now. And Steve has to respect that.
So he doesn't chase. But that doesn't mean he doesn't look, doesn't try to find any way he can to know that Bucky's doing okay. Just because Bucky's still capable of evasion doesn't mean everything (anything) else is good or even bearable or that there's nothing Steve can do even without being by Bucky's side. Sam, bless him, appreciates the difference in that distinction and continues to render aid and counsel in that quest.
But Bucky is more than merely still capable of evasion; he is a ghost as much as he ever was and this time there is no cryo-tomb hiding him. There are vapor trails that invariably turn out to be nothing, false leads and false hopes and while Steve sometimes thinks he sees Bucky in the edge of his vision, he is always turning too late to ever know for sure. He sometimes pretends that it was him because he hopes that Bucky wants to know that he is okay, too, that his care for Steve didn't end at the Potomac's bank. That they are not two ships from the same lost port forever at sea.
He doesn't spend all of his time (or Sam's time) looking for Bucky, or even most of it. There are also HYDRA bases and television appearances to take up his time and energy and attention, murderbots and visits to children's hospitals, tragedies and parades. There is Peggy and there is somehow Sharon and there is Sam when their mission is only the next beer on Sam's ever-growing list of Microbrews He Must Try or Whatever Else Is In Steve's Notebook That's Not Disco Because No.
There are also the Avengers. And then there are the hearings. and then there are the Accords. And then there are no more Avengers because any place that requires so much that goes against his principles cannot be Home.
And so Steve finds himself at liberty but not quite free, above reproach but not above suspicion. His friends aren't all his allies anymore, some by choice and some by necessity and which is which Steve doesn't examine too closely. He's neither lonely nor alone, but he's working without a safety net he's grown to rely on and he feels the lack. It hasn't really mattered yet, but it will.
The changing political climate has made him wary, if not necessarily more cautious. But when Bucky is delivered to him like a gift -- a tip from Sharon, who is suspicious about its origins -- he doesn't care if that gift is an answered prayer or a poisoned apple.
When he shows up at the shuttered factory in Baltimore, Bucky is in too much pain to be anything but relieved to see him, although that quickly changes.
"It's a trap," Bucky says hoarsely. Steve gave him what water he had on him, but it was half a bottle. Bucky's been here for a couple of days; he smells less like piss and sweat and more like ammonia and when Steve calls Sam, he tells him to bring his PJ kit and whatever is needed for treating dehydration. "It's a trap."
"I know that, Buck," Steve tells him as he tries to pull the contraption apart with his bare hands. The factory's clearly been raided for everything from tools to copper wire and there's nothing to be used to help, no pry-bar or power tools to hand, and the angle is crap. "Not important right now."
Bucky makes a noise that's more animal growl than the hiss of frustration Steve knows best, but he doesn't look up from what he's doing.
"I am not going to let them use me to kill you again," Bucky spits out, each word punctuated by a pain more profound than whatever this doohickey is doing to him.
This does get Steve to look up. He turns and crouches so that he's eye-level with Bucky. "And I am not going to let them take you from me again. So." And then he goes back to work.
By the time Sam shows up, Steve has had no luck with the vise or with finding anything Bucky can sit on or lean against to take the weight off of his knees or a reliable water source because half a bottle of Poland Spring's not enough. But it's still a victory of sorts because Sam is the first person to show up, not the bad guys.
"Help me," Bucky mouths, too exhausted and dehydrated to make much noise anymore. Steve ignores him because Bucky isn't asking for Sam to get him out of the machine. Or, rather, he is and that's the problem. Bucky has decided that if Steve won't leave without him, then they should leave together even if that means leaving the arm in the machine. Steve's refusal to tear Bucky's arm off at the shoulder or elbow has been a bone of contention for the last two hours and used up the last of Bucky's reserves of energy.
Instead, Sam and Sam go over their options, which are limited because they can't appeal to Tony. But Sam has another suggestion, which is ridiculous and not, and goes back out to the car to retrieve his gear and call Scott Lang. He returns a few minutes later with two bags and the assurance that Lang can get here by morning.
Sam got his EMT certification as a PJ and keeps it up because of the Avengers and Steve has utter faith in his ability, having seen it action a dozen times at the least. Sam tends to bitch out the Avengers as he works on them, giving them crap about why they got hurt or what movie they were watching last night, but he doesn't do that here. He approaches Bucky slowly and calmly and explains everything he wants to do and asks Bucky's permission before he does any of it. Bucky's starting to be affected by the privation, which Steve hopes is the explanation behind the 'tear off my arm' argument, and sometimes Sam has to ask a few times before Bucky can provide anything close to informed consent. But he does and Sam rigs an IV and gets together a pile of blankets high enough so that Bucky can sit on the crate Steve found.
Steve has to watch from a distance because he is on security detail and Sam sincerely hates people hovering and Bucky gets agitated when Steve moves into his line of sight because he still won't rip off his arm. As he makes his rounds, he mostly hears the soothing rise and fall of Sam's voice, although the phrase "Captain No Sense of Self Preservation over there" does carry clearly, presumably intentionally, and the quieter murmur of Bucky's answers. The conversation goes on long past when Bucky is situated, but Steve can't mind in the slightest, no matter what Sam wants to call him. Bucky needs more than Sam can offer as a volunteer counselor, but it can't hurt.
Steve patrols for another two hours before Sam gets up from where he is sitting near (but not next to) Bucky. Who has recovered considerably, looking more alert and less pale now that he's been fed and watered and has exercised his muscle groups in tiny measured motions. When Steve comes back into the room, he doesn't take the spot Sam vacated but chooses to slide down the wall directly across from Bucky. It puts his back toward danger, but he knows from his patrols that it's a safe position because he's in a blind spot for anyone approaching, invisible until they enter the room and turn around.
"They should have come by now," Bucky says.
Steve nods agreement, but shrugs all the same. "If they knew enough to use you as bait, then they knew I wasn't leaving without you. They knew they had time."
He expects Bucky to start the 'tear my arm off' argument again, but he doesn't. Maybe that really was the dehydration and low blood sugar talking.
He has a million questions to ask Bucky now that they're in the same room and healthy enough to converse, a million things to say. He's wargamed out their first meeting a thousand times, practiced this reunion in his head a thousand more, but here and now, it seems almost too much to speak as men, as brothers.
"I missed you," he does say quietly.
Bucky looks away and Steve does not show his disappointment. He has been talked at and talked to for almost two years about what he wants versus what it's likely that Bucky can offer and how the former cannot matter more. So he closes his eyes instead; he's been up for more than twenty hours at this point and he'll be fine if there's a fight, but he's tired and a soldier knows to sleep when he can.
"I missed me, too," he hears Bucky say in a low rumble of a murmur. "You, sometimes, also."
The teasing tone of the last words is off, out of tune from rust, but Steve recognizes it for what it is and feels that much lighter for it. He dozes more than sleeps, but he feels more alert when Sam radios that Lang has arrived.
"My prison record says I'm great at breaking and entering," Steve hears him say as they approach. "Actually, no, my prison record says I'm terrible at it because I got caught, but the highlights never made that list."
Lang reacts physically when he sees Bucky, then does a double-take when Steve rises up out of his blind spot and then again when he recognizes Steve as Captain America out of uniform.
"I feel that you, like my prison record, have left out certain details that make for a much more accurate picture," Lang tells Sam with more than a hint of accusation.
Sam shrugs. "Hey, man, I told you it was Avengers-adjacent," he says with a grin. "Not my fault you lack imagination."
Lang, the worst of his embarrassment shaken off, is a careful listener as Bucky and Steve and Sam take turns explaining what they know and what they don't about the machine holding Bucky's arm like a vise. Lang puts on his rig -- Bucky mouths "Ant-Man" at Steve with a look of such frank disbelief that Steve has to laugh because, good God, it is classic Bucky -- and then they have a very strange discussion about the logistics.
Watching Lang shrink down is startling and amazing, more like watching Wanda unleash her chaos than Tony's machines in action. Steve can barely feel him in his hand as he carries Ant-Man over to the machine, setting him down on Bucky's metal bicep so he can go inside the contraption. Lang's radio works fine shrunk down and he describes what he sees as he walks along Bucky's forearm and wrist. Steve has pulled out a sketchpad and pencil and does his best to turn Lang's words into pictures, asking questions when necessary.
Once it's clear everything is working, Sam leaves them, going back to his patrol so that they're not caught by surprise, but Bucky watches him draw and Steve sits down so that Bucky can see easily without straining his already knotted shoulder and back.
Lang has described a series of small clamps on each side instead of two large ones -- Steve has drawn them kind of like piano hammers -- and they agree that this is preferable because Lang can probably lift each of them in turn more easily than trying to lever a larger grip. But their optimism dies a quick and sudden death when Lang reaches Bucky's wrist.
"It's a good thing I didn't try to test the strength of those clamps," Lang says in a high, breathy voice. "Or else we'd probably all be the size of dust mites. They're not clamps. This isn't a mousetrap -- this is a bomb."
Steve looks at Bucky. "The answer is still no."
Without even a hint of fear or complaint, Lang spends another twenty minutes walking around providing details before he walks back up Bucky's arm, jumping from Bucky's shoulder and returning to full size sitting on the floor. And then he and Steve spend another fifteen correcting the sketches.
"The pressure plates are very shiny and high-tech," Lang says, "but the part that goes boom is not. Standard match blasting cap tucked into some pretty standard high explosive. Whoever did this to you, their ingenuity -- or their budget -- ends by your wrist."
What follows is a conversation that could have taken place in 1944, Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes poring over maps of terrain they've never laid eyes upon as they plan to undo HYDRA's work. It's not the same, of course, but there are enough similarities to weird both of them out, Steve thinks, and he's glad Lang is there for more than just another brain to bounce ideas off of. Sam is paying attention over radio, of course, but he's not a demolition man -- "I'm the guy who swoops in after the thing goes boom" -- and he's mostly moral support and cheerleader.
Lang thinks he can get into the blasting cap and disable the electric match, rendering the cap useless. It'll take time and tools because there are redundancies built in, but Steve thinks they have both -- HYDRA hasn't shown up yet because they're probably just waiting for Steve to blow himself up trying to rescue Bucky. Which isn't going to happen.
It takes more than an hour for Lang to disable the blasting caps, mostly spent on the first one. After that, he takes another look around "just in case" and if he's procrastinating a little before lifting the first pressure plate off of Bucky's forearm, Steve can't blame him. If they've missed anything at all, Lang will be the first to die.
They didn't miss anything.
Bucky cries out in agony once his arm is free; his shoulder and back have been locked into a stress position for days. He won't let Steve or Sam touch him to massage the area loose, choosing to walk it off in jerky strides because his legs haven't had it too much better.
Steve lets him be and turns his attention to Lang, thanking him for a long night-turned-into-day's work that was dangerous even before they knew about the bomb. Lang grows inches with the praise and this, this part of the Captain America legacy, is one Steve doesn't mind. Lang is new to the gig and, Steve suspects, it's part of a larger reinvention after a life not well-led. If a few words from him can keep Lang on this path, can convince him that he's right for the job and for sticking on the side of the angels, then the rest of it is worth it.
Lang hesitantly asks for an autograph for his daughter and Steve flips over the pages in his sketchbook to a clean one, taking a minute to draw a quick doodle of Ant-Man and a short note to Cassie. Lang accepts it gratefully and tucks it away carefully before bidding farewell. He looks around for Bucky, but Bucky's still off stretching, or maybe just looking for silence and solitude.
"He's not the most social creature right now," Steve apologizes, holding out his hand to shake Lang's. "Maybe next time."
Sam walks Lang back to his car and Steve starts pulling together their things in preparation of departing. HYDRA might be willing to wait a bit for Steve to set off the explosions, but they won't wait forever.
"Buck, come on, let's go," he calls out once everything's packed. There is no answer, which doesn't concern him much. There's no Bucky, either, but it's a big building.
"You see Bucky on your way back?" he asks Sam once he returns to grab his kit.
"No," Sam replies and that's when Steve feels fear spike through him. It must show on his face because Sam frowns. "You think he did a runner?"
Steve closes his eyes because he can feel tears and doesn't want to let them fall. "I'm beginning to think so."
They search the factory, clearing room to room like infantry, but it's a big place and even if Bucky were still around, he could evade them. But he's not and Steve knows he's not and he fights the pain in his chest that comes with the knowledge that all they are really doing is making sure Bucky didn't collapse somewhere and pass out.
"Listen," Sam begins once they're outside again, all of the gear in Sam's car trunk. "You've been saying that you'd be fine with Bucky doing his own thing away from you so long as you knew that he was okay. Well, now you know. And as much as it hurts you right now -- and I know it hurts you -- now you have to walk the talk."
Because I won't help you chase down a man who doesn't want to be caught, Sam doesn't have to say.
Steve rubs his face with his hands, aware that he is leaving dirt streaks on his cheeks. "I know," he sighs. "I do. I just..."
Sam puts his hand on his shoulder. "You matter to him, you can't doubt that now."
He sighs. "I don't. I'm just disappointed. To have him so close, to have those moments when it felt like we'd never been apart... that's what he's running from. And that's what hurts."
Worse than if Bucky were running from a stranger.
"That's what he's running from now," Sam agrees, "but that's also what he'll be running back to when he's ready."
Steve has the drive back up to New York on his bike to remind himself that patience is a virtue. And to remind himself to be grateful for everything he has and not be greedy for what he doesn't. Bucky's alive. Bucky's alive and free. Bucky's alive and free and remembers him. Three miracles he has no right to expect, no right to even imagine. These have to be enough. They will be enough.
Bucky runs and Steve doesn't chase, doesn't look for him, doesn't ask why he's not enough for Bucky to stop running. Bucky will stop running when he's ready.
Except that's not how it happens. Steve has to start running before Bucky stops and then things get weird even by their own particular frames of reference. It's a Greek comedy that plays like a tragedy because all of the blood is real. And some of it, too much of it, is Steve's.
By the time they are next in the same room, it's a bombed-out cafeteria of a high school and they are wearing similar uniforms and the shield is sitting between them and the world is possibly ending behind them. It's almost comfortably familiar, even if the details are wild and wildly different, and when Steve looks over at Bucky and grins, he gets an answering one back. And when Bucky runs, he waits for Steve to follow.
Also posted at DW.
Vise
3200 words | PG-ish | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Scott Lang
Steve has, for better or for worse, accepted that Bucky doesn't want to be found. Accepted that continuing to chase after him is not only a waste of time and energy and resources and Sam's vacation days, but also a clear announcement to Bucky that Steve isn't interested in respecting his wishes or his agency. This isn't some romance and Bucky's not playing hard-to-get; for whatever reason -- and there are many possible ones and all of them break Steve's heart -- Bucky doesn't want to be around him right now. And Steve has to respect that.
So he doesn't chase. But that doesn't mean he doesn't look, doesn't try to find any way he can to know that Bucky's doing okay. Just because Bucky's still capable of evasion doesn't mean everything (anything) else is good or even bearable or that there's nothing Steve can do even without being by Bucky's side. Sam, bless him, appreciates the difference in that distinction and continues to render aid and counsel in that quest.
But Bucky is more than merely still capable of evasion; he is a ghost as much as he ever was and this time there is no cryo-tomb hiding him. There are vapor trails that invariably turn out to be nothing, false leads and false hopes and while Steve sometimes thinks he sees Bucky in the edge of his vision, he is always turning too late to ever know for sure. He sometimes pretends that it was him because he hopes that Bucky wants to know that he is okay, too, that his care for Steve didn't end at the Potomac's bank. That they are not two ships from the same lost port forever at sea.
He doesn't spend all of his time (or Sam's time) looking for Bucky, or even most of it. There are also HYDRA bases and television appearances to take up his time and energy and attention, murderbots and visits to children's hospitals, tragedies and parades. There is Peggy and there is somehow Sharon and there is Sam when their mission is only the next beer on Sam's ever-growing list of Microbrews He Must Try or Whatever Else Is In Steve's Notebook That's Not Disco Because No.
There are also the Avengers. And then there are the hearings. and then there are the Accords. And then there are no more Avengers because any place that requires so much that goes against his principles cannot be Home.
And so Steve finds himself at liberty but not quite free, above reproach but not above suspicion. His friends aren't all his allies anymore, some by choice and some by necessity and which is which Steve doesn't examine too closely. He's neither lonely nor alone, but he's working without a safety net he's grown to rely on and he feels the lack. It hasn't really mattered yet, but it will.
The changing political climate has made him wary, if not necessarily more cautious. But when Bucky is delivered to him like a gift -- a tip from Sharon, who is suspicious about its origins -- he doesn't care if that gift is an answered prayer or a poisoned apple.
When he shows up at the shuttered factory in Baltimore, Bucky is in too much pain to be anything but relieved to see him, although that quickly changes.
"It's a trap," Bucky says hoarsely. Steve gave him what water he had on him, but it was half a bottle. Bucky's been here for a couple of days; he smells less like piss and sweat and more like ammonia and when Steve calls Sam, he tells him to bring his PJ kit and whatever is needed for treating dehydration. "It's a trap."
"I know that, Buck," Steve tells him as he tries to pull the contraption apart with his bare hands. The factory's clearly been raided for everything from tools to copper wire and there's nothing to be used to help, no pry-bar or power tools to hand, and the angle is crap. "Not important right now."
Bucky makes a noise that's more animal growl than the hiss of frustration Steve knows best, but he doesn't look up from what he's doing.
"I am not going to let them use me to kill you again," Bucky spits out, each word punctuated by a pain more profound than whatever this doohickey is doing to him.
This does get Steve to look up. He turns and crouches so that he's eye-level with Bucky. "And I am not going to let them take you from me again. So." And then he goes back to work.
By the time Sam shows up, Steve has had no luck with the vise or with finding anything Bucky can sit on or lean against to take the weight off of his knees or a reliable water source because half a bottle of Poland Spring's not enough. But it's still a victory of sorts because Sam is the first person to show up, not the bad guys.
"Help me," Bucky mouths, too exhausted and dehydrated to make much noise anymore. Steve ignores him because Bucky isn't asking for Sam to get him out of the machine. Or, rather, he is and that's the problem. Bucky has decided that if Steve won't leave without him, then they should leave together even if that means leaving the arm in the machine. Steve's refusal to tear Bucky's arm off at the shoulder or elbow has been a bone of contention for the last two hours and used up the last of Bucky's reserves of energy.
Instead, Sam and Sam go over their options, which are limited because they can't appeal to Tony. But Sam has another suggestion, which is ridiculous and not, and goes back out to the car to retrieve his gear and call Scott Lang. He returns a few minutes later with two bags and the assurance that Lang can get here by morning.
Sam got his EMT certification as a PJ and keeps it up because of the Avengers and Steve has utter faith in his ability, having seen it action a dozen times at the least. Sam tends to bitch out the Avengers as he works on them, giving them crap about why they got hurt or what movie they were watching last night, but he doesn't do that here. He approaches Bucky slowly and calmly and explains everything he wants to do and asks Bucky's permission before he does any of it. Bucky's starting to be affected by the privation, which Steve hopes is the explanation behind the 'tear off my arm' argument, and sometimes Sam has to ask a few times before Bucky can provide anything close to informed consent. But he does and Sam rigs an IV and gets together a pile of blankets high enough so that Bucky can sit on the crate Steve found.
Steve has to watch from a distance because he is on security detail and Sam sincerely hates people hovering and Bucky gets agitated when Steve moves into his line of sight because he still won't rip off his arm. As he makes his rounds, he mostly hears the soothing rise and fall of Sam's voice, although the phrase "Captain No Sense of Self Preservation over there" does carry clearly, presumably intentionally, and the quieter murmur of Bucky's answers. The conversation goes on long past when Bucky is situated, but Steve can't mind in the slightest, no matter what Sam wants to call him. Bucky needs more than Sam can offer as a volunteer counselor, but it can't hurt.
Steve patrols for another two hours before Sam gets up from where he is sitting near (but not next to) Bucky. Who has recovered considerably, looking more alert and less pale now that he's been fed and watered and has exercised his muscle groups in tiny measured motions. When Steve comes back into the room, he doesn't take the spot Sam vacated but chooses to slide down the wall directly across from Bucky. It puts his back toward danger, but he knows from his patrols that it's a safe position because he's in a blind spot for anyone approaching, invisible until they enter the room and turn around.
"They should have come by now," Bucky says.
Steve nods agreement, but shrugs all the same. "If they knew enough to use you as bait, then they knew I wasn't leaving without you. They knew they had time."
He expects Bucky to start the 'tear my arm off' argument again, but he doesn't. Maybe that really was the dehydration and low blood sugar talking.
He has a million questions to ask Bucky now that they're in the same room and healthy enough to converse, a million things to say. He's wargamed out their first meeting a thousand times, practiced this reunion in his head a thousand more, but here and now, it seems almost too much to speak as men, as brothers.
"I missed you," he does say quietly.
Bucky looks away and Steve does not show his disappointment. He has been talked at and talked to for almost two years about what he wants versus what it's likely that Bucky can offer and how the former cannot matter more. So he closes his eyes instead; he's been up for more than twenty hours at this point and he'll be fine if there's a fight, but he's tired and a soldier knows to sleep when he can.
"I missed me, too," he hears Bucky say in a low rumble of a murmur. "You, sometimes, also."
The teasing tone of the last words is off, out of tune from rust, but Steve recognizes it for what it is and feels that much lighter for it. He dozes more than sleeps, but he feels more alert when Sam radios that Lang has arrived.
"My prison record says I'm great at breaking and entering," Steve hears him say as they approach. "Actually, no, my prison record says I'm terrible at it because I got caught, but the highlights never made that list."
Lang reacts physically when he sees Bucky, then does a double-take when Steve rises up out of his blind spot and then again when he recognizes Steve as Captain America out of uniform.
"I feel that you, like my prison record, have left out certain details that make for a much more accurate picture," Lang tells Sam with more than a hint of accusation.
Sam shrugs. "Hey, man, I told you it was Avengers-adjacent," he says with a grin. "Not my fault you lack imagination."
Lang, the worst of his embarrassment shaken off, is a careful listener as Bucky and Steve and Sam take turns explaining what they know and what they don't about the machine holding Bucky's arm like a vise. Lang puts on his rig -- Bucky mouths "Ant-Man" at Steve with a look of such frank disbelief that Steve has to laugh because, good God, it is classic Bucky -- and then they have a very strange discussion about the logistics.
Watching Lang shrink down is startling and amazing, more like watching Wanda unleash her chaos than Tony's machines in action. Steve can barely feel him in his hand as he carries Ant-Man over to the machine, setting him down on Bucky's metal bicep so he can go inside the contraption. Lang's radio works fine shrunk down and he describes what he sees as he walks along Bucky's forearm and wrist. Steve has pulled out a sketchpad and pencil and does his best to turn Lang's words into pictures, asking questions when necessary.
Once it's clear everything is working, Sam leaves them, going back to his patrol so that they're not caught by surprise, but Bucky watches him draw and Steve sits down so that Bucky can see easily without straining his already knotted shoulder and back.
Lang has described a series of small clamps on each side instead of two large ones -- Steve has drawn them kind of like piano hammers -- and they agree that this is preferable because Lang can probably lift each of them in turn more easily than trying to lever a larger grip. But their optimism dies a quick and sudden death when Lang reaches Bucky's wrist.
"It's a good thing I didn't try to test the strength of those clamps," Lang says in a high, breathy voice. "Or else we'd probably all be the size of dust mites. They're not clamps. This isn't a mousetrap -- this is a bomb."
Steve looks at Bucky. "The answer is still no."
Without even a hint of fear or complaint, Lang spends another twenty minutes walking around providing details before he walks back up Bucky's arm, jumping from Bucky's shoulder and returning to full size sitting on the floor. And then he and Steve spend another fifteen correcting the sketches.
"The pressure plates are very shiny and high-tech," Lang says, "but the part that goes boom is not. Standard match blasting cap tucked into some pretty standard high explosive. Whoever did this to you, their ingenuity -- or their budget -- ends by your wrist."
What follows is a conversation that could have taken place in 1944, Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes poring over maps of terrain they've never laid eyes upon as they plan to undo HYDRA's work. It's not the same, of course, but there are enough similarities to weird both of them out, Steve thinks, and he's glad Lang is there for more than just another brain to bounce ideas off of. Sam is paying attention over radio, of course, but he's not a demolition man -- "I'm the guy who swoops in after the thing goes boom" -- and he's mostly moral support and cheerleader.
Lang thinks he can get into the blasting cap and disable the electric match, rendering the cap useless. It'll take time and tools because there are redundancies built in, but Steve thinks they have both -- HYDRA hasn't shown up yet because they're probably just waiting for Steve to blow himself up trying to rescue Bucky. Which isn't going to happen.
It takes more than an hour for Lang to disable the blasting caps, mostly spent on the first one. After that, he takes another look around "just in case" and if he's procrastinating a little before lifting the first pressure plate off of Bucky's forearm, Steve can't blame him. If they've missed anything at all, Lang will be the first to die.
They didn't miss anything.
Bucky cries out in agony once his arm is free; his shoulder and back have been locked into a stress position for days. He won't let Steve or Sam touch him to massage the area loose, choosing to walk it off in jerky strides because his legs haven't had it too much better.
Steve lets him be and turns his attention to Lang, thanking him for a long night-turned-into-day's work that was dangerous even before they knew about the bomb. Lang grows inches with the praise and this, this part of the Captain America legacy, is one Steve doesn't mind. Lang is new to the gig and, Steve suspects, it's part of a larger reinvention after a life not well-led. If a few words from him can keep Lang on this path, can convince him that he's right for the job and for sticking on the side of the angels, then the rest of it is worth it.
Lang hesitantly asks for an autograph for his daughter and Steve flips over the pages in his sketchbook to a clean one, taking a minute to draw a quick doodle of Ant-Man and a short note to Cassie. Lang accepts it gratefully and tucks it away carefully before bidding farewell. He looks around for Bucky, but Bucky's still off stretching, or maybe just looking for silence and solitude.
"He's not the most social creature right now," Steve apologizes, holding out his hand to shake Lang's. "Maybe next time."
Sam walks Lang back to his car and Steve starts pulling together their things in preparation of departing. HYDRA might be willing to wait a bit for Steve to set off the explosions, but they won't wait forever.
"Buck, come on, let's go," he calls out once everything's packed. There is no answer, which doesn't concern him much. There's no Bucky, either, but it's a big building.
"You see Bucky on your way back?" he asks Sam once he returns to grab his kit.
"No," Sam replies and that's when Steve feels fear spike through him. It must show on his face because Sam frowns. "You think he did a runner?"
Steve closes his eyes because he can feel tears and doesn't want to let them fall. "I'm beginning to think so."
They search the factory, clearing room to room like infantry, but it's a big place and even if Bucky were still around, he could evade them. But he's not and Steve knows he's not and he fights the pain in his chest that comes with the knowledge that all they are really doing is making sure Bucky didn't collapse somewhere and pass out.
"Listen," Sam begins once they're outside again, all of the gear in Sam's car trunk. "You've been saying that you'd be fine with Bucky doing his own thing away from you so long as you knew that he was okay. Well, now you know. And as much as it hurts you right now -- and I know it hurts you -- now you have to walk the talk."
Because I won't help you chase down a man who doesn't want to be caught, Sam doesn't have to say.
Steve rubs his face with his hands, aware that he is leaving dirt streaks on his cheeks. "I know," he sighs. "I do. I just..."
Sam puts his hand on his shoulder. "You matter to him, you can't doubt that now."
He sighs. "I don't. I'm just disappointed. To have him so close, to have those moments when it felt like we'd never been apart... that's what he's running from. And that's what hurts."
Worse than if Bucky were running from a stranger.
"That's what he's running from now," Sam agrees, "but that's also what he'll be running back to when he's ready."
Steve has the drive back up to New York on his bike to remind himself that patience is a virtue. And to remind himself to be grateful for everything he has and not be greedy for what he doesn't. Bucky's alive. Bucky's alive and free. Bucky's alive and free and remembers him. Three miracles he has no right to expect, no right to even imagine. These have to be enough. They will be enough.
Bucky runs and Steve doesn't chase, doesn't look for him, doesn't ask why he's not enough for Bucky to stop running. Bucky will stop running when he's ready.
Except that's not how it happens. Steve has to start running before Bucky stops and then things get weird even by their own particular frames of reference. It's a Greek comedy that plays like a tragedy because all of the blood is real. And some of it, too much of it, is Steve's.
By the time they are next in the same room, it's a bombed-out cafeteria of a high school and they are wearing similar uniforms and the shield is sitting between them and the world is possibly ending behind them. It's almost comfortably familiar, even if the details are wild and wildly different, and when Steve looks over at Bucky and grins, he gets an answering one back. And when Bucky runs, he waits for Steve to follow.
Also posted at DW.