Fic: If You Want Blood, Epilogue
If You Want Blood, Epilogue
By: Mytay
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What goes around . . .
Disclaimer: Marvel and its characters in no way belong to me - Disney owns almost all of my childhood. The story and chapter titles belong to songs by AC/DC.
Spoilers: For Captain America: The Winter Soldier, if somehow you haven't seen that yet.
Notes: This story is also posted here on AO3 and here on fanfiction.net.
Epilogue
Two Months Later
"Kadakia broke out."
Steve slammed a fist onto the kitchen counter in his apartment, but kept his expression calm - this was not about him; this was about Tony, and about finding a killer before she was hired by someone to kill again. "Well, I can't say that was unexpected. When do we move to find her?"
"We don't." Tony inhaled deeply, running a hand through already messy hair. "She wasn't out more than ten hours before they found her body. Shot cleanly through the heart."
He reached into his hoodie pocket and put a bullet on the table. Steve recognized the unique calibre immediately. He leaned forward and picked it up, running his fingers over it as if he could touch-read its secrets
"Bucky," Steve breathed out.
Tony nodded, his evaluating gaze focused on Steve's face. Steve knew he couldn't hide everything he was thinking - and most of what he was thinking hurt.
"Are there any leads?"
"Yes." Tony put something else on the table.
It was a picture, probably grabbed from some kind of surveillance camera - grainy, colours washed out, but there was Bucky, clearly featured in the bottom left corner. He was wearing dark clothes, a leather glove over his metal hand. He had both a backpack and a duffle bag slung over one shoulder, and his long hair was partially obscuring his face.
Three months ago, Steve and Sam had tracked him to France, where Bucky had destroyed a small Hydra cell and promptly vanished into thin air, no trace of him, trail gone cold. It was surreal to see him again knowing that he was back on home soil, casually walking from a gas station as if he hadn't just sniped a woman through the heart.
"There's another one of these at another gas station twenty miles north. And a third one thirty miles east of that."
Steve processed this information in two seconds flat. "He's leaving a trail. On purpose."
"Considering his fantastically terrifying skill at disappearing, I would say that's a definite yes. We're not the only ones looking for him, Steve."
Steve knew that, knew that Bucky wasn't just avoiding him, but avoiding everyone - remnants of Hydra; several government agencies, domestic and abroad, demanding his head; and a few criminal organizations that wanted, like Hydra, to recapture and use the Winter Soldier themselves.
"We're going to find him first." Steve cast a glance out of his windows - it was quite a view, here on the eighty-ninth floor, just below the gym and recreation areas, two floors below Tony's own apartment. Steve often lost hours standing and staring out at the New York skyline, especially on clear nights with what looked like more lights on the streets than stars in the sky.
Bucky was heading in this direction, and he was leaving a deliberate trail. That meant that someone, possibly more than one group, was already tracking him, and he was letting Steve know where he was because it was more than he could handle on his own.
Steve was going to find him, come hell or high water. And Steve was going to have the best help this century could offer.
"Got my latest Mark ready to go, and your new armour is waiting for you in the lab - what better test run, right?" Tony's smile had a sharp edge to it. "Do you think he killed Kadakia because it was the best way to get our attention, or because she was some kind of threat to him?"
"I'd like to think he wouldn't do it just because of the first reason, but this is . . . I'm going to say possibly both." Steve was well aware of the fact that his best friend had killed, and killed plenty, but that was Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes out there, not the Winter Soldier. Steve was going to bring Bucky home.
"I'll stick with that assumption too." Tony breathed out slowly, spreading his hands out on the dented countertop. "You want me to call in the other Avengers?"
"No, this one is just you and me." Steve did his own deep breathing, though adrenaline was already making him feel like a live wire. "There's no one else I would rather have with me on this."
"All right." Tony somehow managed to smile without actually lifting his lips up at the corners - something to do with his eyes, more expressive than most. "Let's go on another merry chase, Cap."
"Right behind you, Shellhead." Steve grinned as Tony groaned.
In very little time they were wrapped up in their respective armours and loading up onto the private jet. Tony was still in the process of testing his newer, faster quinjet design.
He reached for Steve's arm as the plane took off. "Your mission, your calls. And just so you know, they'll be no back talk from me this time. Unless you want it, you masochist."
"I want it," Steve said without thinking. "Smart-mouth aside, you've always got something to say that I want to hear. Sometimes that even includes your terrible jokes."
"I am hilarious, and once you've caught up on seventy years of pop culture, you will die laughing when reflecting back on my comedic genius. And also dead serious here, Steve. You tell me to back off, and I will."
His gaze was honest and intense. Their friendship had developed quickly, considering how antagonistically they had started out, and Steve hadn't anyone he'd come to like this much, this fast, since Bucky.
"I trust you to know when I need you to stay back," Steve said, and Tony nodded. "And right now, I want you to tell me everything you know about the Winter Soldier."
"I'm sure there's nothing I know that you haven't already read a hundred times over."
"Probably not, but I want to hear your take on it."
"JARVIS, bring up the . . ." Tony trailed off, pausing and levelling Steve with a rather grim stare. "Before we have our pow-wow, I gotta ask you - there's every chance Barnes' conditioning may be beyond our, or anyone's, ability to fix. Have you thought about what to do if -"
"He saved me. He can break whatever brainwashing they put him through. And we're gonna help him. No matter what it takes." There was silence from Tony. Steve dialled back his passion, giving the other man an apologetic look. "Listen, you're under no obligation, when I said we, I meant -"
"Stow it, Cap, we are going to save Barnes and give Hydra another kick in the ass when we do it. Those fuckers have taken enough from both us - I'm not letting them have this one." Tony summoned all the files he had on James Barnes and the Winter Soldier onto one of his large glass screens; this information included everything Tony had, alongside what Steve, Sam and Natasha had managed to dig up. "Let's plan the hell out this, and then be ready to throw all those plans out the window - I doubt Barnes is going to play by the rules."
"Something you two have in common," Steve said wryly. "And thank you, Tony."
"No, Cap, friends don't thank friends for doing the friend thing. Or so I've been told by my friends." Tony offered up a rare, fond expression before the very familiar larger-than-life grin took its place. "We're gonna go rescue the world's most terrifying assassin, and half the world's best agents and criminals are going to be right on his ass - and by extension, ours. You ready for this?"
Steve thought of Bucky here, with him. Of introducing Bucky to all the great and terrible wonders of the 21st century, to all the amazing people Steve counted as his friends. He thought of Bucky laughing at Tony's jokes, of Bucky attempting to take Tony down a peg and getting Tony to laugh in return. He imagined Bucky making one of those light, pithy comments that always held more truth than teasing.
Steve's determination rose up in him, strong and unflinching.
He had lost everything. He could get this back. He would damn well get this one thing back, so help him God.
"Iron Man, let's go kick some ass."
Tony's delighted laughter filled the jet. "Fuck yeah, Captain America."
Steve grinned, and even as the fear, the doubts, the guilt welled up in his gut, all he had to do was take in Tony's focused expression, his brilliant mind working double-time behind those dark eyes of his, and Steve knew that everything he imagined wasn't wishful thinking - it was the future he and Tony were setting into motion right there in that very instant.
Bucky Barnes was already home, he just didn't know it yet.
Author's Note: Finished! I didn't stick to my chapter-a-day promise, which was a lot harder than I realized it would be. Hopefully despite my lateness, some of you stuck around and still enjoyed this - I'm very grateful if you have :)
I have a crazy amount of half-finished fic waiting on my hard-drive, including some 80,000 words of Avengers fic, and the Daredevil bug has bitten me, so I'm writing some more for that show as well. *sigh* Marvel, what you do to me.
No idea when I'll be posting next, but when I do it will likely be one of those mentioned above, maybe a sequel to this. And while I adore Steve/Tony, I've been reading lots of Steve/Bucky too. *throws hands in the air* I don't know anymore - hell, maybe I'll dive into the Merlin fic I'm halfway through.
Being a nerd that loves many things is hard - except not, because yay for all the things we get to be nerdy about!
Many thanks to you readers, and to you commentators especially - feedback helps provide inspiration to keep writing, and occasionally changes the direction of the story (shout out to OkamiPrincess and ErinKenobi - you guys gave me wonderful ideas and insights! :D)
Thank you very much to all of you!