One Rogue Line of Code (Steve/Bucky, PG-13)
word-count:~7,000
characters: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark
genre:gen, PG-13
warnings:some violence
story summary: Steve Rogers spent most of his time building robots out of scrap metal. It was the one thing that took his mind off of the past, and all he'd lost. One day, he found exactly what he'd been looking for, and everything changed.
Steve scanned the piles of metal waste around him, squinting. His eyes were getting worse again; he needed another laser adjustment, but his insurance only covered the procedure once every two years.
"Find anything yet?" Sam sounded impatient.
"No," Steve said, "but I'm getting closer."
"You said that an hour ago." Something clunked and rattled down-slope towards Steve. Sam was starting to kick stuff out of boredom. That meant Steve had about ten minutes left before his friend would lose patience altogether.
But today was the day. He was going to find it. Steve'd had a good feeling about today since the morning--when he'd caught a glimpse of actual blue sky through the smog-layer. A small glimpse, granted, but it was so rare he took it as a sign. Carefully, he climbed back up out of the valley of bot-parts he'd been standing in, and then picked another heap to slide down, feet skidding to a halt against the body of a tank-mech. That's when he saw what he'd been looking for all week: a humanoid model torso, lightly damaged, with attached head and most of a left arm.
As a failed super-soldier volunteer, Steve had a life-long contract with Stark Industries: housing in an economy dorm, free use of all their base-level robotics labs, and full access to all of their silos-no exceptions. Lucky for Steve, Stark Industries recycled everything it found, including scrap from battlefields; that was why he'd come to this particular restricted access recycling silo.
Judging by the charred jagged edges where its right arm had been severed, and the other dents and holes pock-marking its torso, this bot unit had undoubtedly come from a battlefield. It looked almost like a heavily modified version of the automated soldiers Hydra had favored during the last few years of the war. But it was sleeker, with a black faceplate, complete with goggles, that made it look more human than the featureless models that followed. Steve knelt next to it reverently, running his hands over the smooth black metal of the helmet. "Sam!"
"Finally!" Sam said, extending his suit's wings. "Can we go now--whoa." Sam landed next to Steve and flipped up his visor. "That's huge. Will it even fit?"
Steve looked over at his hover wagon, scuffed in so many places it was more grey than red these days. The wagon was a sturdy workhorse, and most of the time it could easily handle him and his daily haul of metal parts, but Sam was right-the bot's chassis alone was as long and broad as the wagon itself. "The bot goes in the wagon. I'll crawl out."
"Pff. As if. Your lungs'd collapse halfway up the trash-chute. I'll carry you."
Sam lifted the bot and carried it over to the wagon with ease, thanks to Stark Industries' super-soldier serum. They'd both volunteered a few years ago, during the height of the war, along with Natasha, Bruce and dozens of others. The Serum worked differently on everybody-giving them strength, agility or increased resistance to damage-in Sam's case, it had given him all three. It hadn't worked at all on Steve; he was left just as sickly as he'd always been. Of course he'd still been considered one of the lucky ones. Eighty percent of the time, the serum killed the recipient. They'd all promised each other that day-a solemn oath-that if they made it out alive they'd owe each other a favor, redeemable anytime, anywhere, no matter what it was. Bruce had called in his with Steve two years ago. Steve had never used any of his. He hadn't had a reason to.
The wagon's hover engine stuttered and groaned under the weight of the bot torso, and started to sink lower to the ground. "Oh come on!" Steve let out a frustrated huff that quickly turned into a cough, aggravated by all the dust motes in the air.
"You really need the whole thing?" Sam asked. "Can't you just separate the head or--"
"No! No, it's--this is exactly right, just as it is." Steve combed his fingers through his hair, aggravated. "What am I gonna do?"
Sam's comm-band beeped. He furrowed his brow as he read the message. "Sorry, man. Duty calls."
"No worries," Steve said. "Captain America. Always on the job."
"That's right, I am." Sam smiled as he spread his wings. "You ready? We can come back for this later."
"No, wait! How about you let me borrow the spare? Then I can help the wagon with the weight, and-"
"What?" Sam snapped. "How about no? We've been over this."
"I promise I'll be careful. I've watched you do it a thousand times."
"No. You're not using my spare wings. But I got an idea." Sam punched some keys on his comm-band.
A few seconds later there was a soft beep from above them. Steve looked up the massive cylinder of the scrap silo and saw a circling red dot, growing larger by the second. "Redwing?"
Sam's robotic falcon swooped down, and after a few more button-strokes from Sam, grabbed hold of the wagon's back-rim, talons clamping firmly around the metal. The wagon stabilized and started to rise.
"That's gotta be at least three-hundred pounds of load he's holding, cart and all. He can lift that much?"
"Wouldn't be much use in the field if he couldn't," Sam said, watching Redwing and the wagon rise. The bird's repulsor-thrusters left behind a streak of blue light as it rose to the top of the chute.
Steve whistled appreciatively.
"My pride and joy." Sam clapped Steve on the shoulder. "You ready?"
Steve nodded and turned his back to Sam, who deftly latched the passenger harness around him, like he'd done dozens of times before.
#
The last clamp jammed a few times. Steve had to shove it into place with raw strength, of which he didn't exactly possess much. But it was enough. The clamp closed over the rear right mounting frame, locking the torso into place. Steve stepped away, satisfied, and stretched his tired shoulders as he admired his new acquisition. It'd need a lot of work, but he had most, if not all the parts that were missing.
He'd collected plenty of base-model torso chassis, two full sets of limbs and a half-year's worth of joints, wiring and other components. Even though this bot was unlike anything he'd worked with previously, the base model components could be made to fit easily enough. Finally, he'd get a chance to create a full bot that was truly his own. Getting it fully operational might not happen, but he'd always considered that a pipe dream anyway.
Steve hummed to himself as he welded the back-plate to the damaged torso-base, and molded the metal into shape. The attached arm was old, but sturdy. The spare bot-arms Steve had collected didn't look even remotely similar, but maybe they didn't need to. Even with mismatched arms this bot would be beautiful.
Maybe he'd switch up the faceplate eventually, make something friendlier-looking. No matter how brilliant the designs, it seemed robot designers rarely put much effort into faces. More often than not, military faces were left as blank slates so the head could have multiple camera, display and targeting module options. Even luxury home-service models had, at best, ovals for eyes and a curve for a mouth, sometimes a nose that served no real purpose-a half-hearted approximation of human features that ended up being far more off-putting than familiar. Robotics design was an art, one Steve had fallen in love with over the last few years. It was the one thing that kept him looking towards the future, and kept him from dwelling on all he'd lost.
Steve attached a new power core and breastplate to the bot's chassis, which fit perfectly, and not only made it look far less broken but also gave him a much better starting point to hook up the other replacement parts. He'd spent the last ten years learning the ins and outs of Stark Robotics, and with the core in place, he could get the bot's body-at least the exterior-completed before midnight. The metal was still badly scuffed. He was going to have to hand polish it, but there was no point in even doing that before he'd attached the rest of the parts. He spent the next four hours adding the other arm and both legs. By the time he'd finished, Steve was running on fumes and pure adrenaline, hands shaky with low blood sugar. But it was worth it, oh it was so worth it.
#
Steve's ration of noodles tasted better than usual, and he wolfed them down hungrily as he admired his handiwork. The bot's goggles stared at him blankly and he smiled up at them in between bites, letting his vision blur until the goggles looked sort of like eyes. "Hey there, I'm Steve. What's your name?"
The robot stayed silent, of course; Steve hadn’t even looked at the receptors or processors yet, but it was safe to assume they'd need replacing. He went through a mental checklist of what receptors he had on hand, and where he could dig up the right kind of processors. Somehow, during the course of dinner, his pipe dream of building a functional bot had sprung back to life and seemed feasible.
Maybe he would build it, and it'd be great, and then maybe he'd get hired properly by Stark Robotics and maybe then he'd get to move out of tier 4F of the Starkville dorm he'd been living in since the serum. But moving out was unlikely, what with the overcrowding and the wait-list, he was lucky to have a home here at all. He had a real chance at finding the parts, though. The scrap heaps were filling up with all kinds of treasures from the battlefields lately, as today's haul had proven.
Newly energized, Steve grabbed his visor and flipped on the lights along with basic magnification, scanning the left arm. If he was going to bring the bot online, he'd have to figure out what kind of kinetic OS it used before he wired the new right arm; understanding how the existing circuitry worked was crucial.
There were no obvious identifying markers, excluding the faded Stark logo on the breastplate he'd attached himself. Or wait...maybe there was something. Steve got a microfiber cloth, soaked it with mild solvent and rubbed at the grime covering the left shoulder. He rubbed as gently as he could, and then a bit harder. The grime wouldn't budge. Steve enlarged the magnification on his visor. "Wait a minute...that's not dirt, is it?" Steve took off his visor and rubbed at the metal with his thumb.
The grey smudges dissipated beneath his hand and turned clear as glass, then flickered briefly from blue fabric, to black leather, and then went clear again. "Whoa..." Steve said, awed. Beneath the transparent casing was a layer of metal plates-robotic musculature-unlike anything he'd ever seen-and, working where he did, he thought he'd seen nearly everything when it came to robotics design. But this-this looked almost alien. The casing wasn't plastic, it wasn't glass, and it didn't have the telltale shimmer of transparent aluminum; it was something he didn't recognize.
Steve stepped back and looked at the bot. "What are you?" Nothing on this bot was standard or followed any designs he was familiar with. He couldn't even find the access seams on the head-usually, they were right below the cranial plate. "Where the hell is it?" Steve muttered. "You have a release notch somewhere, you have to."
Some pre-war models had been designed without easily-accessible controls, assuming that any robot worth repairing would find its way back to a workshop, and wouldn't need to be able to perform self-repairs. But this one, based on its build and the damage it had taken, had been a soldier, and those were nearly all built to be self sufficient. They'd have to be able to repair themselves. Unless...
"Unless they didn't want you to," Steve said, growing more excited as the idea took hold. "You weren't meant to come back." He stood and walked to the rear side of the robot, flipping his visor down and increasing magnification as he scanned its shoulders and neck. Seeing nothing useful, he closed his eyes and reached out with his fingertips again.
"Aha!" he said triumphantly, when he found a minuscule indent by the right shoulder blade, invisible to the eye, but not to touch. As Steve's thumb pushed down, a loud hiss poured from the seam at the bottom of the neck. Steve jerked his arm away, and hurried around to the front of the robot to better observe what was happening. The lower portion of the robot's faceplate slid forward and away from the head, its goggles separated, lenses retracting from the bridge of the nose and pulling back and away towards the ears, in the shape of two feathered wings, revealing a face.
"Holy shit," Steve said, his breath catching in his throat, because this was not what he'd been expecting to find beneath the faceplate-not at all. Dark lashes, strong cheekbones, slightly parted lips-features that were unique and perfect and heartbreakingly familiar.
His mind went into overdrive, flicker-flashing memories he'd done his best to forget. Not because they were bad-they were some of his best, but also his most painful. His best friend, Bucky Barnes, his self-assured smile, the sound of him laughing and his face when he told Steve he'd been drafted for war. Bucky had been declared killed in action ten years ago. The last time Steve had seen this face was at Bucky's funeral, in a framed photograph. There hadn’t been an open casket.
It can't be, Steve told himself, over and over. But it looked exactly like him. "Bucky?" Steve asked, reaching out a shaking hand to trace his fingers over the bot's cheek. The skin was cool and smooth, but undoubtedly synthetic.
There was no response, which somehow made it even worse. Whatever this was, even though it looked like his long-lost friend, it was a replica. One that was, for the moment, just as dead as Bucky himself.
Steve’s legs folded in on themselves and he sunk to the floor. It felt like the world's cruelest joke. To take his one refuge, the one thing he'd used to take his mind off of his past-constructing bots-and taint it with the memory that still made his heart break.
He sat there, stupefied, until his mind came back online enough to give him a more rational, though even more terrible, explanation. “Call Sam,” he said, eyes never once leaving that face. His comm-band responded, dialing Sam, but it went straight to voicemail. "Priority channel only," the polite synth-voice said. Then Sam's voice added "Busy avenging. Catch you later!"
Steve didn't usually leave messages for Sam, but this time he had to. “Sam. You need to see this.”
#
After several minutes, Steve’s heart began to slow down again. With quivering legs, he stood and forced himself to have another look at the back of Bucky’s head. Lifting the now-exposed rear cranial panel, he examined the power circuitry in the main processor. It was undamaged, which was a surprise. The connection to Bucky’s power cells had all been severed, but its processor was, theoretically, still intact. Maybe even still functional.
He popped open the spinal power column and yanked hard on the chassis’ neural cables, pulling them taut. Fumbling for a clamp in his pocket, he eyed the processor’s pathways and the cables. “Yeah, I can work with this.”
He had a huge stash of cables in his desk, and it didn’t take him long to find two he could graft together. He bound them with his fingers, one of those rare moments where having slender hands came in damn useful. Once they were in place, he carefully soldered them together and covered them in insta-rubber.
"Let's see if there's any life left in you,” he said, mostly to himself, and plugged a charger cable into Bucky’s leg socket. Then he collapsed on the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.
#
The sun felt warm against his skin. Beneath him, the sand was a cool blanket. The sound of seagulls in the distance kept him from falling asleep all the way.
"Come on, one more time," Bucky said, nudging Steve in the ribs playfully.
"Hmm. No. This is better," Steve said rolling onto his side. He let his arm fall on Bucky's chest and pulled himself in close. Bucky was warm too, and Steve huddled in next to him as a gust of ocean breeze blew across his back.
"Just one more round in the water." Bucky sat up, and Steve watched his smile turn sad. "Please. I might not get another chance."
Bucky wasn't in his swim trunks anymore. He was wearing his army uniform, face set in a grim line.
"Wait. We can go."
But Bucky didn't answer. His skin had gone pale and he settled down into the sand which wasn't sand at all anymore but dark-brown earth.
"Buck? Bucky!" Steve called, grabbing him by the shoulders. But his eyes were empty and his skin was cold.
"System online. Thirty-eight percent charge."
Steve sat bolt upright in bed. That was Bucky's voice. And Bucky's face was looking at him. He was online.
"Operational capacity fifty-two percent. Resuming mission." Bucky turned his head, looking down at the mounting brackets and snapped them apart, one by one, until he was free.
"Wait! Wait- what mission?" Steve asked.
Bucky took a step forward and looked at Steve, like he'd only just noticed he was there. "Identify."
"Steve-my name is Steve Rogers."
"Non-threat," Bucky said. "Resuming mission." He turned his back on Steve, facing the window.
Steve ignored his thudding heart and walked up behind Bucky. He was looking down, probably running a geographical scan. There wasn't much to see with regular human eyes. The smog layer was thick in all directions. "That's the city. What's left of it, anyway. It uh-it didn't used to look like that. But there was the war, and Hydra-"
Bucky grabbed Steve by the throat. "Where is High Command?"
Between the terror and the pressure on his windpipe, Steve couldn't get a single word out.
As though he could sense his thoughts, Bucky released his grip on Steve's throat, and grabbed him instead by the shoulder. Not much of an improvement. If he squeezed any harder, Steve's collarbone was toast.
"Where is High Command?"
"I-I don't know," Steve said. And it wasn't just Bucky's deadly grip that hurt, or the unfeeling words. It was that face, Bucky's face, looking at him without an ounce of recognition. "Bucky, it's me." It was a foolish thing to say, but he couldn't help it.
With a hard shove, Bucky sent Steve hurtling against the wall. Then he turned towards the window, raised his right leg and kicked hard, shattering the 'unbreakable' glass. Before Steve could fully process what was about to happen, Bucky stepped out into the open and dropped down into the murky depths below.
#
"There's a hole in your wall."
Steve turned and blinked at Sam, who was still in his Captain America uniform.
"You okay, Steve?"
"He-he woke up," Steve said. It wasn't enough of an explanation, he realized dimly, but he was having trouble thinking clearly.
Sam came closer and gave Steve a once over. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine." Steve touched his throat, and the immediate flash of pain made it clear he'd been bruised. "He said he was resuming his mission. He asked me where high command was."
"High command?" Sam cocked an eyebrow. "You mean, Hydra High Command. This thing's Hydra?"
"He's not a thing, he-" Steve felt his world coming apart at the seams. Nothing made sense anymore. "Sam, it's Bucky. He looks like Bucky."
"Bucky? Your friend-the one who died ten years ago?"
"He has his face, and-we have to find him!"
Sam's expression went stone cold. "Yeah, we have to find him. Right now. Does he have a tracker?"
"What?" Steve's thoughts, still panicked, clicked rapidly into place. "Yes-yes, I used a Stark chassis to replace his, they all have a built-in tracker!" Steve ran to his desk, tore open the drawer and rummaged through its contents until he found the matching tracker chip with a blinking light. He snapped it onto his comm-band.
"Link the signal to me and let's go," Sam said.
#
Through the breather-mask Sam had given him, Steve could not only breathe in the dirty air of the city, but he could see through it too. The breather had a built in visual enhancer and showed infrared, heat and three other light-spectrums. Bucky wasn't far now.
"Hydra High Command," Sam said as they neared his location-the ruins of what had been a fortress once. "Well, what’s left of it. This was its last location in the city, before we won the war. Took us fifteen tries to get through their defenses here," Sam, said, ”Lost a lot of good people." The bitterness in Sam's voice was clear. They'd declared the war won, but it never really felt over. Hydra had been pushed into hiding, but it was still there, festering like a wound, drawing in new followers year after year.
“He said he was resuming his mission," Steve said. "We don’t know how long he’s been in that junk heap. Could’ve been years. If he’s been offline this whole time, he might not even know the war is over. Maybe he was trying to take Hydra down, too."
Sam shook his head. “No. I’ve got access to every top secret weapon on our side and he’s not one of ours-though he looks it. But that was the point. They wanted him to look like one of ours."
"What do you mean?"
"Hold that thought," Sam said, spinning into a quick dive that sent Steve's stomach into his throat. Something huge and grey-a chunk of rock and metal-grazed the tip of Sam's wing, sending a shower of sparks into the air.
Bucky was standing in a field of rubble, lifting another boulder-sized soon-to-be-projectile. "Stop!" Steve shouted. Bucky pulled back his arm, ready to throw and Steve, in a moment of panic tore off his breather mask and shouted again, "Bucky, Stop! Hold your fire!"
And Bucky stopped.
Sam landed a good twenty meters in front of Bucky, weapons primed; he released Steve from the harness and stepped bodily in front of him, electro-shield active.
Steve, for his part, was too busy gasping for air and being terrified to think clearly. He slipped his breather mask back on, took in two deep clean lungfuls of air, and peeked around Sam. Bucky was watching them, but hadn't moved. He'd gone so still, Steve wondered if he'd shut himself down or run out of power again.
“Identify yourself,” Sam ordered.
“Classified,” Bucky said.
“State your mission,” Sam said. “Or wait, lemme guess-that’s classified too.”
“Mission override engaged. Defend High Command.”
“There’s nothing left to defend!” Sam said. “You see that, right?”
As though considering, Bucky turned his head, likely scanning the area around and beneath them. “Mission failure. Return to nearest base for debriefing.”
“Good luck with that,” Sam said. “No bases left in this city.”
Steve swallowed, working up his courage and raised his hands as he stepped out from behind Sam. “We're not going to hurt you.”
“Mission failure. Return to nearest base for debriefing. No bases located within scanning range.”
“Yeah I know,” Steve took another cautious step forward. He had no idea why Bucky hadn’t resumed attacking them. He’d seen him punch through his building like it was tissue paper. If he got within punching distance himself, he might end up with a crater in his chest. But his sense of self-preservation was nothing compared to seeing Bucky's face. He had to get through to him, no matter the cost. He removed the breather mask again, trying to ignore the acrid stink of the air and the way it made his eyes sting, and said. “There’s no more missions. The war is over.”
“Wiping protocols. Initiate self destruct.”
“Self de- no, no, don’t initiate self destruct!” Steve said, panicking.
“Mission parameters?”
“Uh...” Steve thought for a moment. “Establish new base for debriefings. 130087 Starkville-”
"Are you crazy?" Sam snapped. "He's not going back to your place."
"I can get through to him!" Steve insisted. "He isn't attacking us, he's asking for new directives, he's-"
"He's Hydra." Sam shook his head. "You think this thing looks like your friend so it can’t be all bad, but I'm sorry, Steve-'not currently attacking us,' doesn't make him safe. We're taking him in."
Right on cue, Steve heard the engines of an approaching ship. The Avengers-jet. He'd heard it often enough to recognize its sound. "Sam, no."
The jet settled on the ground behind them and the door opened. Hulk and Black Widow stepped out, heading towards them.
"Please. He's all I have left of Bucky," Steve said, tears starting to well up. He blinked them away angrily.
"Sorry, buddy, this isn't up for discussion."
Hulk took Bucky gently by the shoulders and started to walk him towards the jet.
"Then I'm going with you!" Steve said.
"Like hell you are!"
"I'm calling in my favor." It was a last resort, but Steve had no choice.
Sam began to protest, but stopped himself. "Okay. Get onboard."
#
Steve watched as Bucky sat motionless on the bolted-down cot. The lack of any movement at all, like the rising and falling of a breathing chest, made it painfully obvious that Bucky wasn’t human.
A door slid open behind Steve. He turned around to see Black Widow entering the room, holding a data-pad.
“Did some digging,” she said, handing it to him.
Steve took the pad and his heart skipped a beat. There was a photo of Bucky, smiling and in uniform. And right beside it was another photo, one Steve had never seen before, of Bucky dead, pierced head to toe with tubes and wires. Steve started reading the text beneath it, growing more bewildered with every line. "This isn't how it happened," he said quietly. "Bucky was rescued November 8th and he died months later at the battle of Lehigh."
“I’m sorry Steve. That was a lie they told, a more palatable truth than what actually happened. The 107th, along with James Buchanan Barnes was captured October 2nd, 2043," Natasha continued. "One month later they were all freed. The Barnes they rescued is sitting in that cell." She nodded towards Bucky, who was still facing the wall. Steve wondered if, had Bucky been able to hear them, he'd be interested in what they had to say.
"They found the real, biological James Buchanan Barnes dead in the lab of one Doctor Arnim Zola, November 28th, 2043. Three weeks after Lehigh."
At a loss for words, Steve swallowed, bone-deep horror building in him as he paged through the file, looking at one gruesome image after another.
"Barnes died from a process called neural-cloning: his brain was copied to a synthetic one. Nobody has ever survived the procedure, and Barnes was no exception."
“So he is Bucky,” Steve said slowly. “It’s his mind in there.”
“It was. But that’s not what Hydra wanted. They didn’t want a man; they wanted a door. They wanted a way in-to our bases, our army, our intel. And what better way to create the perfect spy then to build one made from one of ours."
"A subterfuge bot?"
"A Winter Soldier. Unstoppable. Undetectable. He could disappear into a crowd, look just like one of us. He was welcomed back into our ranks as a hero. And for all intents and purposes he was Barnes, until Lehigh, when Hydra initiated a remote memory-wipe and override, stripping away everything Barnes and replacing it with their orders."
Steve pulled in a shuddering breath and read aloud the text on the data-pad. "At Lehigh, the Winter Soldier unit wearing the appearance of James Buchanan Barnes turned on his fellow soldiers, slaughtering them, until he was taken down with an EMP shrapnel cannon. The unit was destroyed and the pieces were sent to Stark Industries for recycling. A subsequent raid of the base where the 107th had been held captive led to the discovery of a hidden lab containing the cryogenically frozen remains of dozens of human experiments including James Buchanan Barnes. His remains were...shipped back to Brooklyn, New York for burial."
Natasha put her hand carefully on Steve's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Shaking his head, Steve said, "Synthetic brains are an imperfect science at best. And memory deletion is never one hundred percent. He might still be in there."
Her eyes softened, nearly imperceptible, but there. “Not likely. If Hydra knows one thing, it’s how to unmake people. Even if some shred of him is still in there...you might not like what you find.”
“Maybe,” Steve said, “but I have to try. Need you to do a favor for me first, though."
"You calling it in?"
Her eyes softened, nearly imperceptible, but there. "You calling it in?"
Steve nodded. "I know I can't go in the cell with him, but just let me talk to him, please."
Natasha cocked an eyebrow. "What makes you think I can override the cell-controls.?"
"Because you're Natasha. You always find a way."
She chuckled. "Point." And with that, she left the room.
A few seconds later, the intercom panel crackled. The sound was on.
#
“The night you told me you were drafted, I was so angry...” Steve cleared his dry throat and took a sip of water from the canteen Bruce had dropped off along with dinner a few hours ago. Steve had been talking to Bucky non-stop, driven by the belief that it was making a difference, even if it wasn’t obvious. Bucky seemed to be reacting, in his own minute ways. Blinking, when he had no need to. Once, about thirty minutes ago, he’d even turned his head, slightly, towards Steve.
“...I wasn’t angry at you. Or even that you were drafted. I was angry that I wasn’t going with you.” Steve sat on the floor, cross-legged, and picked at the tiny frayed hole in his pant-leg-a new tear, probably from the evasive maneuvers earlier that day. "I just wanted to go with you, do my part. Instead I stayed home and watched Hydra tear up everything until they evacuated us. You know they took out both bridges? The beach is gone, too. Turned to glass from the heat."
Steve took another sip from the canteen. His head felt heavy, and his limbs even more so. He settled down on his side. Wishing he had a blanket, or even a cot like Bucky's. Slowly, Steve's eyes drifted shut, and exhaustion started to pull him under.
"It was cold," Bucky said.
Steve jerked awake, heart racing, and stared at Bucky, hoping he hadn't just dreamt his voice.
Bucky was still looking straight ahead at the wall across from him. "The doctor put us in some kind of tank-felt like ice. And then there was this pain..." he brought his hand up to his forehead. "My brain felt like it was full of fire, and then when I woke up I was back at base, and everybody was telling me I was a hero," He looked at Steve. "But that's not what I am, Steve."
Hearing his name spoken by Bucky made Steve's eyes fill to the brim with tears before he could even express why of course Bucky was a hero and it wasn't his fault that all this happened. A siren blared before he could give voice to any of it.
Bucky stood, moving towards the glass.
"What's happening?" Steve asked. "Level five alert," the computer replied in response. "Lockdown imminent."
"They're here," Bucky said, voice low. He began to back away from the glass.
"Hydra?" Steve said, with dawning horror. "How did they find you?"
"Trackers. They have thousands of different channels; they’d’ve sensed the trail as soon as I came online."
"They can't breach this base," Steve said, to reassure himself as well as Bucky. "There's no way."
A heavy slam came from behind Steve. He whipped around to see a Hulk-sized distention in the wall.
"Steve!" Sam's voice came over the intercom. "There's too many of them, we can't hold them off. Get into the cell-it's the safest place for you right now. We'll get there as soon as we-" The intercom cut off with the sound of an explosion.
Bucky's cell door slid up, and he walked out.
"We're supposed to get inside," Steve said.
"You're supposed to get inside," Bucky said. "I'll hold them off."
"What, no way!" Steve began to protest, but the dent in the wall exploded outwards and two large floating orbs came through. "Attack mechs," Steve gasped. "I've seen them before, but never that size."
"Regular mechs wouldn't work. This base is full of super-soldiers," Bucky said as he stepped in front of Steve. "Get in the cell before it closes. Hurry!"
Steve considered, a beat too long perhaps-the door began to close, Bucky turned, ready to shove Steve in, but was blindsided by one of the mechs, moving fast enough to blur.
The mech knocked Bucky to the floor and clamped down, four of its legs unfolding, and locking Bucky’s torso in place, arms and all. He let out a pained groan as it began to squeeze. From its squat, cylindrical body, two tendrils extended, and pushed against Bucky’s temples.
Steve ran to help him, not sure what he’d do when he got there. But he had to do something. He was only steps away when Bucky’s face contorted with pain, his whole body straining against the mech's hold, limbs shaking.
The large double doors to the room burst open, and Sam flew in, followed by Natasha who was busy firing at two more mechs. "Steve, look out!" Sam shouted.
Something heavy and fast crashed into Steve, knocking him through the air. He landed, dazed and shook his head, clearing his vision just in time to see one of the mechs speeding towards him, and raised his arms defensively, a useless but instinctive gesture. The mech stopped just short of crashing into him, and thrust its arms into the wall around Steve, effectively locking him in place. But he still had an inch of space to breathe, and just enough wiggle room to shove his hands against the mech.
The mech began to maneuver in tighter, shifting its form to close the gap between itself and Steve. It wanted to crush him, too, but not before taking his thoughts. The brain sucker latched onto his forehead and a spike of pain seared through Steve’s skull. “No! Stop!” he ground out.
The pain stopped, and the mech’s body clattered heavily to the ground, its arms and tendrils following behind one after the other. Its lights had gone dead.
It took several moments for Steve to fully process what had happened and climb to his feet. He was no worse for wear, aside from a few bruises he could already feel blossoming from the impact. He glanced down at the mech again, suspiciously, to make sure it wasn’t just some kind of bizarre fake out. But it remained motionless.
Steve darted over to Bucky, who was moments from losing consciousness, and in a moment of desperation, Steve grabbed hold of the mech attacking Bucky, shouting, “Stop!” again.
And just like with the other, the mech locked up, its legs released, and it fell straight down, rolling off of Bucky’s torso and onto the floor.
"Incoming!" Natasha called out as two mechs flew past her, barreling towards Steve.
Bucky gasped for air, and Steve rushed to his side. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he rasped. “What the hell did you do?”
Steve grabbed his hand and helped him sit. “I have no idea.”
"Whatever it is, do it again!" Bucky shouted as he grabbed Steve and rolled him bodily out of the path of one of the mechs. Sam was firing at the other, but it was generating a shield, eerily similar to Sam's, and deflected every shot.
Steve looked at his hands, as though they'd tell him the answer. He considered running towards the mech Natasha was fighting, but both it and the one facing off against Sam were both far too high in the air for Steve to reach. So instead, he reached his hands out, fingers spread wide, concentrated on the mechs and shouted, "Stop!"
The clatter of metal hitting the floor sent a tidal wave of relief through Steve's veins. He lowered his arms, realizing only then that he was panting, trying to catch his breath like he'd been running a marathon.
"Well that's all of them," Iron Man said, by way of greeting. "I had to invent a new EMP multi-burst-signal -cycler on the fly to take out the ones in the control room. Knocked out all the base's sensors for a few minutes so I had no clue what was going on in here." Turning to Sam, he asked, "How exactly did you guys take them down?"
#
“This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s saying something.” Tony turned away from Bucky, looking at Steve and the others. "His brain is rewriting itself. There’s one line of code here.” He thunked his fingertip against the spot on the projected monitor. “It’s running through all the white matter channels, undoing the previous deletions and simultaneously rewriting all the trackers in his system, of which there are many, I might add. It’s incredible. I don’t know how he’s doing it.”
“He’s not,” Bruce said quietly.
“I’m sorry, what?” Tony asked.
“He’s not doing it. Steve is,” Bruce said, “The serum worked on him, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Steve asked. It was a ridiculous claim, unexpected from somebody as brilliant as Bruce. “You’ve seen me, right? Do I look like a super soldier to you?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Natasha said, smirking. “I didn’t look any different after either.”
“You mean this-" Tony pointed at the code again. “This is Steve?”
“Yeah, in a manner of speaking,” Bruce said, taking a step closer to Tony. “Run a sub-level genetic scan and pass it through the bio-tech comparison relay. I bet you anything the nodes will line up.”
Even through the expressionless helmet that was Tony’s face these days, his waning disbelief was obvious. “So you...you can talk to machines? Is that how you stopped the mechs, how you got through to him?” Tony asked, pointing at Bucky.
“I...” Steve started to protest, but stopped himself. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I told them to stop.”
“You told them to stop.” Tony scoffed. “You just took down a roomful of Hydra-mechs with a couple of verbal commands. Sam, your little buddy here seems damn useful, if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but you should, because that’s what I’d tell you.”
“Very useful, and not typically a naturally occurring mutation,” Bruce added. “We should go to my lab and run some tests, see what else you can-"
“We missed it,” Tony interjected. “I missed it. How the hell did I miss it?”
“You weren’t looking for this type of effect?” Bruce shrugged. “The serum was made to enhance what was already there. Most of the successful serum recipients manifested traits that were physically verifiable."
“I don’t miss things,” Tony said.
“Sometimes you do.” Natasha turned and gave Steve a smile. “Told you. You’re not a dud. The serum did work on you.”
Steve was speechless. They-the Avengers-all seemed convinced he had a power.
“What else did I miss?” Tony muttered to himself.
“Ready to go see how powerful you are?” Bruce asked Steve.
“What if it was just a fluke?” Steve still wasn’t entirely convinced. “Some freak adrenaline thing.”
“I used to get adrenaline spikes all the time and that literally never happened to me,” Tony said, dryly.
Bucky tried on a smile; the first Steve had seen on him. “Face it, Steve, you’re a superhero,” he said.
That just seemed-ludicrous. “I’m no hero, Buck,” Steve protested
Bucky sighed, and shook his head at the others. “He was always like this. In tenth grade he was sure he was flunking geometry the whole year through, and then in the end, he aced it"
Steve turned to him, stunned. “You remember that?”
Bucky locked eyes with him for a beat before answering. “Yeah. I guess I do.” His smile widened, became more genuine.
Steve took Bucky by the hand, and the metal felt warm and alive beneath his fingers.
characters: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark
genre:gen, PG-13
warnings:some violence
story summary: Steve Rogers spent most of his time building robots out of scrap metal. It was the one thing that took his mind off of the past, and all he'd lost. One day, he found exactly what he'd been looking for, and everything changed.
Steve scanned the piles of metal waste around him, squinting. His eyes were getting worse again; he needed another laser adjustment, but his insurance only covered the procedure once every two years.
"Find anything yet?" Sam sounded impatient.
"No," Steve said, "but I'm getting closer."
"You said that an hour ago." Something clunked and rattled down-slope towards Steve. Sam was starting to kick stuff out of boredom. That meant Steve had about ten minutes left before his friend would lose patience altogether.
But today was the day. He was going to find it. Steve'd had a good feeling about today since the morning--when he'd caught a glimpse of actual blue sky through the smog-layer. A small glimpse, granted, but it was so rare he took it as a sign. Carefully, he climbed back up out of the valley of bot-parts he'd been standing in, and then picked another heap to slide down, feet skidding to a halt against the body of a tank-mech. That's when he saw what he'd been looking for all week: a humanoid model torso, lightly damaged, with attached head and most of a left arm.
As a failed super-soldier volunteer, Steve had a life-long contract with Stark Industries: housing in an economy dorm, free use of all their base-level robotics labs, and full access to all of their silos-no exceptions. Lucky for Steve, Stark Industries recycled everything it found, including scrap from battlefields; that was why he'd come to this particular restricted access recycling silo.
Judging by the charred jagged edges where its right arm had been severed, and the other dents and holes pock-marking its torso, this bot unit had undoubtedly come from a battlefield. It looked almost like a heavily modified version of the automated soldiers Hydra had favored during the last few years of the war. But it was sleeker, with a black faceplate, complete with goggles, that made it look more human than the featureless models that followed. Steve knelt next to it reverently, running his hands over the smooth black metal of the helmet. "Sam!"
"Finally!" Sam said, extending his suit's wings. "Can we go now--whoa." Sam landed next to Steve and flipped up his visor. "That's huge. Will it even fit?"
Steve looked over at his hover wagon, scuffed in so many places it was more grey than red these days. The wagon was a sturdy workhorse, and most of the time it could easily handle him and his daily haul of metal parts, but Sam was right-the bot's chassis alone was as long and broad as the wagon itself. "The bot goes in the wagon. I'll crawl out."
"Pff. As if. Your lungs'd collapse halfway up the trash-chute. I'll carry you."
Sam lifted the bot and carried it over to the wagon with ease, thanks to Stark Industries' super-soldier serum. They'd both volunteered a few years ago, during the height of the war, along with Natasha, Bruce and dozens of others. The Serum worked differently on everybody-giving them strength, agility or increased resistance to damage-in Sam's case, it had given him all three. It hadn't worked at all on Steve; he was left just as sickly as he'd always been. Of course he'd still been considered one of the lucky ones. Eighty percent of the time, the serum killed the recipient. They'd all promised each other that day-a solemn oath-that if they made it out alive they'd owe each other a favor, redeemable anytime, anywhere, no matter what it was. Bruce had called in his with Steve two years ago. Steve had never used any of his. He hadn't had a reason to.
The wagon's hover engine stuttered and groaned under the weight of the bot torso, and started to sink lower to the ground. "Oh come on!" Steve let out a frustrated huff that quickly turned into a cough, aggravated by all the dust motes in the air.
"You really need the whole thing?" Sam asked. "Can't you just separate the head or--"
"No! No, it's--this is exactly right, just as it is." Steve combed his fingers through his hair, aggravated. "What am I gonna do?"
Sam's comm-band beeped. He furrowed his brow as he read the message. "Sorry, man. Duty calls."
"No worries," Steve said. "Captain America. Always on the job."
"That's right, I am." Sam smiled as he spread his wings. "You ready? We can come back for this later."
"No, wait! How about you let me borrow the spare? Then I can help the wagon with the weight, and-"
"What?" Sam snapped. "How about no? We've been over this."
"I promise I'll be careful. I've watched you do it a thousand times."
"No. You're not using my spare wings. But I got an idea." Sam punched some keys on his comm-band.
A few seconds later there was a soft beep from above them. Steve looked up the massive cylinder of the scrap silo and saw a circling red dot, growing larger by the second. "Redwing?"
Sam's robotic falcon swooped down, and after a few more button-strokes from Sam, grabbed hold of the wagon's back-rim, talons clamping firmly around the metal. The wagon stabilized and started to rise.
"That's gotta be at least three-hundred pounds of load he's holding, cart and all. He can lift that much?"
"Wouldn't be much use in the field if he couldn't," Sam said, watching Redwing and the wagon rise. The bird's repulsor-thrusters left behind a streak of blue light as it rose to the top of the chute.
Steve whistled appreciatively.
"My pride and joy." Sam clapped Steve on the shoulder. "You ready?"
Steve nodded and turned his back to Sam, who deftly latched the passenger harness around him, like he'd done dozens of times before.
#
The last clamp jammed a few times. Steve had to shove it into place with raw strength, of which he didn't exactly possess much. But it was enough. The clamp closed over the rear right mounting frame, locking the torso into place. Steve stepped away, satisfied, and stretched his tired shoulders as he admired his new acquisition. It'd need a lot of work, but he had most, if not all the parts that were missing.
He'd collected plenty of base-model torso chassis, two full sets of limbs and a half-year's worth of joints, wiring and other components. Even though this bot was unlike anything he'd worked with previously, the base model components could be made to fit easily enough. Finally, he'd get a chance to create a full bot that was truly his own. Getting it fully operational might not happen, but he'd always considered that a pipe dream anyway.
Steve hummed to himself as he welded the back-plate to the damaged torso-base, and molded the metal into shape. The attached arm was old, but sturdy. The spare bot-arms Steve had collected didn't look even remotely similar, but maybe they didn't need to. Even with mismatched arms this bot would be beautiful.
Maybe he'd switch up the faceplate eventually, make something friendlier-looking. No matter how brilliant the designs, it seemed robot designers rarely put much effort into faces. More often than not, military faces were left as blank slates so the head could have multiple camera, display and targeting module options. Even luxury home-service models had, at best, ovals for eyes and a curve for a mouth, sometimes a nose that served no real purpose-a half-hearted approximation of human features that ended up being far more off-putting than familiar. Robotics design was an art, one Steve had fallen in love with over the last few years. It was the one thing that kept him looking towards the future, and kept him from dwelling on all he'd lost.
Steve attached a new power core and breastplate to the bot's chassis, which fit perfectly, and not only made it look far less broken but also gave him a much better starting point to hook up the other replacement parts. He'd spent the last ten years learning the ins and outs of Stark Robotics, and with the core in place, he could get the bot's body-at least the exterior-completed before midnight. The metal was still badly scuffed. He was going to have to hand polish it, but there was no point in even doing that before he'd attached the rest of the parts. He spent the next four hours adding the other arm and both legs. By the time he'd finished, Steve was running on fumes and pure adrenaline, hands shaky with low blood sugar. But it was worth it, oh it was so worth it.
#
Steve's ration of noodles tasted better than usual, and he wolfed them down hungrily as he admired his handiwork. The bot's goggles stared at him blankly and he smiled up at them in between bites, letting his vision blur until the goggles looked sort of like eyes. "Hey there, I'm Steve. What's your name?"
The robot stayed silent, of course; Steve hadn’t even looked at the receptors or processors yet, but it was safe to assume they'd need replacing. He went through a mental checklist of what receptors he had on hand, and where he could dig up the right kind of processors. Somehow, during the course of dinner, his pipe dream of building a functional bot had sprung back to life and seemed feasible.
Maybe he would build it, and it'd be great, and then maybe he'd get hired properly by Stark Robotics and maybe then he'd get to move out of tier 4F of the Starkville dorm he'd been living in since the serum. But moving out was unlikely, what with the overcrowding and the wait-list, he was lucky to have a home here at all. He had a real chance at finding the parts, though. The scrap heaps were filling up with all kinds of treasures from the battlefields lately, as today's haul had proven.
Newly energized, Steve grabbed his visor and flipped on the lights along with basic magnification, scanning the left arm. If he was going to bring the bot online, he'd have to figure out what kind of kinetic OS it used before he wired the new right arm; understanding how the existing circuitry worked was crucial.
There were no obvious identifying markers, excluding the faded Stark logo on the breastplate he'd attached himself. Or wait...maybe there was something. Steve got a microfiber cloth, soaked it with mild solvent and rubbed at the grime covering the left shoulder. He rubbed as gently as he could, and then a bit harder. The grime wouldn't budge. Steve enlarged the magnification on his visor. "Wait a minute...that's not dirt, is it?" Steve took off his visor and rubbed at the metal with his thumb.
The grey smudges dissipated beneath his hand and turned clear as glass, then flickered briefly from blue fabric, to black leather, and then went clear again. "Whoa..." Steve said, awed. Beneath the transparent casing was a layer of metal plates-robotic musculature-unlike anything he'd ever seen-and, working where he did, he thought he'd seen nearly everything when it came to robotics design. But this-this looked almost alien. The casing wasn't plastic, it wasn't glass, and it didn't have the telltale shimmer of transparent aluminum; it was something he didn't recognize.
Steve stepped back and looked at the bot. "What are you?" Nothing on this bot was standard or followed any designs he was familiar with. He couldn't even find the access seams on the head-usually, they were right below the cranial plate. "Where the hell is it?" Steve muttered. "You have a release notch somewhere, you have to."
Some pre-war models had been designed without easily-accessible controls, assuming that any robot worth repairing would find its way back to a workshop, and wouldn't need to be able to perform self-repairs. But this one, based on its build and the damage it had taken, had been a soldier, and those were nearly all built to be self sufficient. They'd have to be able to repair themselves. Unless...
"Unless they didn't want you to," Steve said, growing more excited as the idea took hold. "You weren't meant to come back." He stood and walked to the rear side of the robot, flipping his visor down and increasing magnification as he scanned its shoulders and neck. Seeing nothing useful, he closed his eyes and reached out with his fingertips again.
"Aha!" he said triumphantly, when he found a minuscule indent by the right shoulder blade, invisible to the eye, but not to touch. As Steve's thumb pushed down, a loud hiss poured from the seam at the bottom of the neck. Steve jerked his arm away, and hurried around to the front of the robot to better observe what was happening. The lower portion of the robot's faceplate slid forward and away from the head, its goggles separated, lenses retracting from the bridge of the nose and pulling back and away towards the ears, in the shape of two feathered wings, revealing a face.
"Holy shit," Steve said, his breath catching in his throat, because this was not what he'd been expecting to find beneath the faceplate-not at all. Dark lashes, strong cheekbones, slightly parted lips-features that were unique and perfect and heartbreakingly familiar.
His mind went into overdrive, flicker-flashing memories he'd done his best to forget. Not because they were bad-they were some of his best, but also his most painful. His best friend, Bucky Barnes, his self-assured smile, the sound of him laughing and his face when he told Steve he'd been drafted for war. Bucky had been declared killed in action ten years ago. The last time Steve had seen this face was at Bucky's funeral, in a framed photograph. There hadn’t been an open casket.
It can't be, Steve told himself, over and over. But it looked exactly like him. "Bucky?" Steve asked, reaching out a shaking hand to trace his fingers over the bot's cheek. The skin was cool and smooth, but undoubtedly synthetic.
There was no response, which somehow made it even worse. Whatever this was, even though it looked like his long-lost friend, it was a replica. One that was, for the moment, just as dead as Bucky himself.
Steve’s legs folded in on themselves and he sunk to the floor. It felt like the world's cruelest joke. To take his one refuge, the one thing he'd used to take his mind off of his past-constructing bots-and taint it with the memory that still made his heart break.
He sat there, stupefied, until his mind came back online enough to give him a more rational, though even more terrible, explanation. “Call Sam,” he said, eyes never once leaving that face. His comm-band responded, dialing Sam, but it went straight to voicemail. "Priority channel only," the polite synth-voice said. Then Sam's voice added "Busy avenging. Catch you later!"
Steve didn't usually leave messages for Sam, but this time he had to. “Sam. You need to see this.”
#
After several minutes, Steve’s heart began to slow down again. With quivering legs, he stood and forced himself to have another look at the back of Bucky’s head. Lifting the now-exposed rear cranial panel, he examined the power circuitry in the main processor. It was undamaged, which was a surprise. The connection to Bucky’s power cells had all been severed, but its processor was, theoretically, still intact. Maybe even still functional.
He popped open the spinal power column and yanked hard on the chassis’ neural cables, pulling them taut. Fumbling for a clamp in his pocket, he eyed the processor’s pathways and the cables. “Yeah, I can work with this.”
He had a huge stash of cables in his desk, and it didn’t take him long to find two he could graft together. He bound them with his fingers, one of those rare moments where having slender hands came in damn useful. Once they were in place, he carefully soldered them together and covered them in insta-rubber.
"Let's see if there's any life left in you,” he said, mostly to himself, and plugged a charger cable into Bucky’s leg socket. Then he collapsed on the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.
#
The sun felt warm against his skin. Beneath him, the sand was a cool blanket. The sound of seagulls in the distance kept him from falling asleep all the way.
"Come on, one more time," Bucky said, nudging Steve in the ribs playfully.
"Hmm. No. This is better," Steve said rolling onto his side. He let his arm fall on Bucky's chest and pulled himself in close. Bucky was warm too, and Steve huddled in next to him as a gust of ocean breeze blew across his back.
"Just one more round in the water." Bucky sat up, and Steve watched his smile turn sad. "Please. I might not get another chance."
Bucky wasn't in his swim trunks anymore. He was wearing his army uniform, face set in a grim line.
"Wait. We can go."
But Bucky didn't answer. His skin had gone pale and he settled down into the sand which wasn't sand at all anymore but dark-brown earth.
"Buck? Bucky!" Steve called, grabbing him by the shoulders. But his eyes were empty and his skin was cold.
"System online. Thirty-eight percent charge."
Steve sat bolt upright in bed. That was Bucky's voice. And Bucky's face was looking at him. He was online.
"Operational capacity fifty-two percent. Resuming mission." Bucky turned his head, looking down at the mounting brackets and snapped them apart, one by one, until he was free.
"Wait! Wait- what mission?" Steve asked.
Bucky took a step forward and looked at Steve, like he'd only just noticed he was there. "Identify."
"Steve-my name is Steve Rogers."
"Non-threat," Bucky said. "Resuming mission." He turned his back on Steve, facing the window.
Steve ignored his thudding heart and walked up behind Bucky. He was looking down, probably running a geographical scan. There wasn't much to see with regular human eyes. The smog layer was thick in all directions. "That's the city. What's left of it, anyway. It uh-it didn't used to look like that. But there was the war, and Hydra-"
Bucky grabbed Steve by the throat. "Where is High Command?"
Between the terror and the pressure on his windpipe, Steve couldn't get a single word out.
As though he could sense his thoughts, Bucky released his grip on Steve's throat, and grabbed him instead by the shoulder. Not much of an improvement. If he squeezed any harder, Steve's collarbone was toast.
"Where is High Command?"
"I-I don't know," Steve said. And it wasn't just Bucky's deadly grip that hurt, or the unfeeling words. It was that face, Bucky's face, looking at him without an ounce of recognition. "Bucky, it's me." It was a foolish thing to say, but he couldn't help it.
With a hard shove, Bucky sent Steve hurtling against the wall. Then he turned towards the window, raised his right leg and kicked hard, shattering the 'unbreakable' glass. Before Steve could fully process what was about to happen, Bucky stepped out into the open and dropped down into the murky depths below.
#
"There's a hole in your wall."
Steve turned and blinked at Sam, who was still in his Captain America uniform.
"You okay, Steve?"
"He-he woke up," Steve said. It wasn't enough of an explanation, he realized dimly, but he was having trouble thinking clearly.
Sam came closer and gave Steve a once over. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine." Steve touched his throat, and the immediate flash of pain made it clear he'd been bruised. "He said he was resuming his mission. He asked me where high command was."
"High command?" Sam cocked an eyebrow. "You mean, Hydra High Command. This thing's Hydra?"
"He's not a thing, he-" Steve felt his world coming apart at the seams. Nothing made sense anymore. "Sam, it's Bucky. He looks like Bucky."
"Bucky? Your friend-the one who died ten years ago?"
"He has his face, and-we have to find him!"
Sam's expression went stone cold. "Yeah, we have to find him. Right now. Does he have a tracker?"
"What?" Steve's thoughts, still panicked, clicked rapidly into place. "Yes-yes, I used a Stark chassis to replace his, they all have a built-in tracker!" Steve ran to his desk, tore open the drawer and rummaged through its contents until he found the matching tracker chip with a blinking light. He snapped it onto his comm-band.
"Link the signal to me and let's go," Sam said.
#
Through the breather-mask Sam had given him, Steve could not only breathe in the dirty air of the city, but he could see through it too. The breather had a built in visual enhancer and showed infrared, heat and three other light-spectrums. Bucky wasn't far now.
"Hydra High Command," Sam said as they neared his location-the ruins of what had been a fortress once. "Well, what’s left of it. This was its last location in the city, before we won the war. Took us fifteen tries to get through their defenses here," Sam, said, ”Lost a lot of good people." The bitterness in Sam's voice was clear. They'd declared the war won, but it never really felt over. Hydra had been pushed into hiding, but it was still there, festering like a wound, drawing in new followers year after year.
“He said he was resuming his mission," Steve said. "We don’t know how long he’s been in that junk heap. Could’ve been years. If he’s been offline this whole time, he might not even know the war is over. Maybe he was trying to take Hydra down, too."
Sam shook his head. “No. I’ve got access to every top secret weapon on our side and he’s not one of ours-though he looks it. But that was the point. They wanted him to look like one of ours."
"What do you mean?"
"Hold that thought," Sam said, spinning into a quick dive that sent Steve's stomach into his throat. Something huge and grey-a chunk of rock and metal-grazed the tip of Sam's wing, sending a shower of sparks into the air.
Bucky was standing in a field of rubble, lifting another boulder-sized soon-to-be-projectile. "Stop!" Steve shouted. Bucky pulled back his arm, ready to throw and Steve, in a moment of panic tore off his breather mask and shouted again, "Bucky, Stop! Hold your fire!"
And Bucky stopped.
Sam landed a good twenty meters in front of Bucky, weapons primed; he released Steve from the harness and stepped bodily in front of him, electro-shield active.
Steve, for his part, was too busy gasping for air and being terrified to think clearly. He slipped his breather mask back on, took in two deep clean lungfuls of air, and peeked around Sam. Bucky was watching them, but hadn't moved. He'd gone so still, Steve wondered if he'd shut himself down or run out of power again.
“Identify yourself,” Sam ordered.
“Classified,” Bucky said.
“State your mission,” Sam said. “Or wait, lemme guess-that’s classified too.”
“Mission override engaged. Defend High Command.”
“There’s nothing left to defend!” Sam said. “You see that, right?”
As though considering, Bucky turned his head, likely scanning the area around and beneath them. “Mission failure. Return to nearest base for debriefing.”
“Good luck with that,” Sam said. “No bases left in this city.”
Steve swallowed, working up his courage and raised his hands as he stepped out from behind Sam. “We're not going to hurt you.”
“Mission failure. Return to nearest base for debriefing. No bases located within scanning range.”
“Yeah I know,” Steve took another cautious step forward. He had no idea why Bucky hadn’t resumed attacking them. He’d seen him punch through his building like it was tissue paper. If he got within punching distance himself, he might end up with a crater in his chest. But his sense of self-preservation was nothing compared to seeing Bucky's face. He had to get through to him, no matter the cost. He removed the breather mask again, trying to ignore the acrid stink of the air and the way it made his eyes sting, and said. “There’s no more missions. The war is over.”
“Wiping protocols. Initiate self destruct.”
“Self de- no, no, don’t initiate self destruct!” Steve said, panicking.
“Mission parameters?”
“Uh...” Steve thought for a moment. “Establish new base for debriefings. 130087 Starkville-”
"Are you crazy?" Sam snapped. "He's not going back to your place."
"I can get through to him!" Steve insisted. "He isn't attacking us, he's asking for new directives, he's-"
"He's Hydra." Sam shook his head. "You think this thing looks like your friend so it can’t be all bad, but I'm sorry, Steve-'not currently attacking us,' doesn't make him safe. We're taking him in."
Right on cue, Steve heard the engines of an approaching ship. The Avengers-jet. He'd heard it often enough to recognize its sound. "Sam, no."
The jet settled on the ground behind them and the door opened. Hulk and Black Widow stepped out, heading towards them.
"Please. He's all I have left of Bucky," Steve said, tears starting to well up. He blinked them away angrily.
"Sorry, buddy, this isn't up for discussion."
Hulk took Bucky gently by the shoulders and started to walk him towards the jet.
"Then I'm going with you!" Steve said.
"Like hell you are!"
"I'm calling in my favor." It was a last resort, but Steve had no choice.
Sam began to protest, but stopped himself. "Okay. Get onboard."
#
Steve watched as Bucky sat motionless on the bolted-down cot. The lack of any movement at all, like the rising and falling of a breathing chest, made it painfully obvious that Bucky wasn’t human.
A door slid open behind Steve. He turned around to see Black Widow entering the room, holding a data-pad.
“Did some digging,” she said, handing it to him.
Steve took the pad and his heart skipped a beat. There was a photo of Bucky, smiling and in uniform. And right beside it was another photo, one Steve had never seen before, of Bucky dead, pierced head to toe with tubes and wires. Steve started reading the text beneath it, growing more bewildered with every line. "This isn't how it happened," he said quietly. "Bucky was rescued November 8th and he died months later at the battle of Lehigh."
“I’m sorry Steve. That was a lie they told, a more palatable truth than what actually happened. The 107th, along with James Buchanan Barnes was captured October 2nd, 2043," Natasha continued. "One month later they were all freed. The Barnes they rescued is sitting in that cell." She nodded towards Bucky, who was still facing the wall. Steve wondered if, had Bucky been able to hear them, he'd be interested in what they had to say.
"They found the real, biological James Buchanan Barnes dead in the lab of one Doctor Arnim Zola, November 28th, 2043. Three weeks after Lehigh."
At a loss for words, Steve swallowed, bone-deep horror building in him as he paged through the file, looking at one gruesome image after another.
"Barnes died from a process called neural-cloning: his brain was copied to a synthetic one. Nobody has ever survived the procedure, and Barnes was no exception."
“So he is Bucky,” Steve said slowly. “It’s his mind in there.”
“It was. But that’s not what Hydra wanted. They didn’t want a man; they wanted a door. They wanted a way in-to our bases, our army, our intel. And what better way to create the perfect spy then to build one made from one of ours."
"A subterfuge bot?"
"A Winter Soldier. Unstoppable. Undetectable. He could disappear into a crowd, look just like one of us. He was welcomed back into our ranks as a hero. And for all intents and purposes he was Barnes, until Lehigh, when Hydra initiated a remote memory-wipe and override, stripping away everything Barnes and replacing it with their orders."
Steve pulled in a shuddering breath and read aloud the text on the data-pad. "At Lehigh, the Winter Soldier unit wearing the appearance of James Buchanan Barnes turned on his fellow soldiers, slaughtering them, until he was taken down with an EMP shrapnel cannon. The unit was destroyed and the pieces were sent to Stark Industries for recycling. A subsequent raid of the base where the 107th had been held captive led to the discovery of a hidden lab containing the cryogenically frozen remains of dozens of human experiments including James Buchanan Barnes. His remains were...shipped back to Brooklyn, New York for burial."
Natasha put her hand carefully on Steve's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Shaking his head, Steve said, "Synthetic brains are an imperfect science at best. And memory deletion is never one hundred percent. He might still be in there."
Her eyes softened, nearly imperceptible, but there. “Not likely. If Hydra knows one thing, it’s how to unmake people. Even if some shred of him is still in there...you might not like what you find.”
“Maybe,” Steve said, “but I have to try. Need you to do a favor for me first, though."
"You calling it in?"
Her eyes softened, nearly imperceptible, but there. "You calling it in?"
Steve nodded. "I know I can't go in the cell with him, but just let me talk to him, please."
Natasha cocked an eyebrow. "What makes you think I can override the cell-controls.?"
"Because you're Natasha. You always find a way."
She chuckled. "Point." And with that, she left the room.
A few seconds later, the intercom panel crackled. The sound was on.
#
“The night you told me you were drafted, I was so angry...” Steve cleared his dry throat and took a sip of water from the canteen Bruce had dropped off along with dinner a few hours ago. Steve had been talking to Bucky non-stop, driven by the belief that it was making a difference, even if it wasn’t obvious. Bucky seemed to be reacting, in his own minute ways. Blinking, when he had no need to. Once, about thirty minutes ago, he’d even turned his head, slightly, towards Steve.
“...I wasn’t angry at you. Or even that you were drafted. I was angry that I wasn’t going with you.” Steve sat on the floor, cross-legged, and picked at the tiny frayed hole in his pant-leg-a new tear, probably from the evasive maneuvers earlier that day. "I just wanted to go with you, do my part. Instead I stayed home and watched Hydra tear up everything until they evacuated us. You know they took out both bridges? The beach is gone, too. Turned to glass from the heat."
Steve took another sip from the canteen. His head felt heavy, and his limbs even more so. He settled down on his side. Wishing he had a blanket, or even a cot like Bucky's. Slowly, Steve's eyes drifted shut, and exhaustion started to pull him under.
"It was cold," Bucky said.
Steve jerked awake, heart racing, and stared at Bucky, hoping he hadn't just dreamt his voice.
Bucky was still looking straight ahead at the wall across from him. "The doctor put us in some kind of tank-felt like ice. And then there was this pain..." he brought his hand up to his forehead. "My brain felt like it was full of fire, and then when I woke up I was back at base, and everybody was telling me I was a hero," He looked at Steve. "But that's not what I am, Steve."
Hearing his name spoken by Bucky made Steve's eyes fill to the brim with tears before he could even express why of course Bucky was a hero and it wasn't his fault that all this happened. A siren blared before he could give voice to any of it.
Bucky stood, moving towards the glass.
"What's happening?" Steve asked. "Level five alert," the computer replied in response. "Lockdown imminent."
"They're here," Bucky said, voice low. He began to back away from the glass.
"Hydra?" Steve said, with dawning horror. "How did they find you?"
"Trackers. They have thousands of different channels; they’d’ve sensed the trail as soon as I came online."
"They can't breach this base," Steve said, to reassure himself as well as Bucky. "There's no way."
A heavy slam came from behind Steve. He whipped around to see a Hulk-sized distention in the wall.
"Steve!" Sam's voice came over the intercom. "There's too many of them, we can't hold them off. Get into the cell-it's the safest place for you right now. We'll get there as soon as we-" The intercom cut off with the sound of an explosion.
Bucky's cell door slid up, and he walked out.
"We're supposed to get inside," Steve said.
"You're supposed to get inside," Bucky said. "I'll hold them off."
"What, no way!" Steve began to protest, but the dent in the wall exploded outwards and two large floating orbs came through. "Attack mechs," Steve gasped. "I've seen them before, but never that size."
"Regular mechs wouldn't work. This base is full of super-soldiers," Bucky said as he stepped in front of Steve. "Get in the cell before it closes. Hurry!"
Steve considered, a beat too long perhaps-the door began to close, Bucky turned, ready to shove Steve in, but was blindsided by one of the mechs, moving fast enough to blur.
The mech knocked Bucky to the floor and clamped down, four of its legs unfolding, and locking Bucky’s torso in place, arms and all. He let out a pained groan as it began to squeeze. From its squat, cylindrical body, two tendrils extended, and pushed against Bucky’s temples.
Steve ran to help him, not sure what he’d do when he got there. But he had to do something. He was only steps away when Bucky’s face contorted with pain, his whole body straining against the mech's hold, limbs shaking.
The large double doors to the room burst open, and Sam flew in, followed by Natasha who was busy firing at two more mechs. "Steve, look out!" Sam shouted.
Something heavy and fast crashed into Steve, knocking him through the air. He landed, dazed and shook his head, clearing his vision just in time to see one of the mechs speeding towards him, and raised his arms defensively, a useless but instinctive gesture. The mech stopped just short of crashing into him, and thrust its arms into the wall around Steve, effectively locking him in place. But he still had an inch of space to breathe, and just enough wiggle room to shove his hands against the mech.
The mech began to maneuver in tighter, shifting its form to close the gap between itself and Steve. It wanted to crush him, too, but not before taking his thoughts. The brain sucker latched onto his forehead and a spike of pain seared through Steve’s skull. “No! Stop!” he ground out.
The pain stopped, and the mech’s body clattered heavily to the ground, its arms and tendrils following behind one after the other. Its lights had gone dead.
It took several moments for Steve to fully process what had happened and climb to his feet. He was no worse for wear, aside from a few bruises he could already feel blossoming from the impact. He glanced down at the mech again, suspiciously, to make sure it wasn’t just some kind of bizarre fake out. But it remained motionless.
Steve darted over to Bucky, who was moments from losing consciousness, and in a moment of desperation, Steve grabbed hold of the mech attacking Bucky, shouting, “Stop!” again.
And just like with the other, the mech locked up, its legs released, and it fell straight down, rolling off of Bucky’s torso and onto the floor.
"Incoming!" Natasha called out as two mechs flew past her, barreling towards Steve.
Bucky gasped for air, and Steve rushed to his side. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he rasped. “What the hell did you do?”
Steve grabbed his hand and helped him sit. “I have no idea.”
"Whatever it is, do it again!" Bucky shouted as he grabbed Steve and rolled him bodily out of the path of one of the mechs. Sam was firing at the other, but it was generating a shield, eerily similar to Sam's, and deflected every shot.
Steve looked at his hands, as though they'd tell him the answer. He considered running towards the mech Natasha was fighting, but both it and the one facing off against Sam were both far too high in the air for Steve to reach. So instead, he reached his hands out, fingers spread wide, concentrated on the mechs and shouted, "Stop!"
The clatter of metal hitting the floor sent a tidal wave of relief through Steve's veins. He lowered his arms, realizing only then that he was panting, trying to catch his breath like he'd been running a marathon.
"Well that's all of them," Iron Man said, by way of greeting. "I had to invent a new EMP multi-burst-signal -cycler on the fly to take out the ones in the control room. Knocked out all the base's sensors for a few minutes so I had no clue what was going on in here." Turning to Sam, he asked, "How exactly did you guys take them down?"
#
“This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s saying something.” Tony turned away from Bucky, looking at Steve and the others. "His brain is rewriting itself. There’s one line of code here.” He thunked his fingertip against the spot on the projected monitor. “It’s running through all the white matter channels, undoing the previous deletions and simultaneously rewriting all the trackers in his system, of which there are many, I might add. It’s incredible. I don’t know how he’s doing it.”
“He’s not,” Bruce said quietly.
“I’m sorry, what?” Tony asked.
“He’s not doing it. Steve is,” Bruce said, “The serum worked on him, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Steve asked. It was a ridiculous claim, unexpected from somebody as brilliant as Bruce. “You’ve seen me, right? Do I look like a super soldier to you?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Natasha said, smirking. “I didn’t look any different after either.”
“You mean this-" Tony pointed at the code again. “This is Steve?”
“Yeah, in a manner of speaking,” Bruce said, taking a step closer to Tony. “Run a sub-level genetic scan and pass it through the bio-tech comparison relay. I bet you anything the nodes will line up.”
Even through the expressionless helmet that was Tony’s face these days, his waning disbelief was obvious. “So you...you can talk to machines? Is that how you stopped the mechs, how you got through to him?” Tony asked, pointing at Bucky.
“I...” Steve started to protest, but stopped himself. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I told them to stop.”
“You told them to stop.” Tony scoffed. “You just took down a roomful of Hydra-mechs with a couple of verbal commands. Sam, your little buddy here seems damn useful, if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but you should, because that’s what I’d tell you.”
“Very useful, and not typically a naturally occurring mutation,” Bruce added. “We should go to my lab and run some tests, see what else you can-"
“We missed it,” Tony interjected. “I missed it. How the hell did I miss it?”
“You weren’t looking for this type of effect?” Bruce shrugged. “The serum was made to enhance what was already there. Most of the successful serum recipients manifested traits that were physically verifiable."
“I don’t miss things,” Tony said.
“Sometimes you do.” Natasha turned and gave Steve a smile. “Told you. You’re not a dud. The serum did work on you.”
Steve was speechless. They-the Avengers-all seemed convinced he had a power.
“What else did I miss?” Tony muttered to himself.
“Ready to go see how powerful you are?” Bruce asked Steve.
“What if it was just a fluke?” Steve still wasn’t entirely convinced. “Some freak adrenaline thing.”
“I used to get adrenaline spikes all the time and that literally never happened to me,” Tony said, dryly.
Bucky tried on a smile; the first Steve had seen on him. “Face it, Steve, you’re a superhero,” he said.
That just seemed-ludicrous. “I’m no hero, Buck,” Steve protested
Bucky sighed, and shook his head at the others. “He was always like this. In tenth grade he was sure he was flunking geometry the whole year through, and then in the end, he aced it"
Steve turned to him, stunned. “You remember that?”
Bucky locked eyes with him for a beat before answering. “Yeah. I guess I do.” His smile widened, became more genuine.
Steve took Bucky by the hand, and the metal felt warm and alive beneath his fingers.