fic: Welcome to Wherever You Are - 1/2 (Avengers; Steve/Bucky; adult)
Welcome to Wherever You Are
Avengers (2012); Steve/Bucky, Natasha, Darcy, Tony; adult; 21,000 words
Steve reaches out and hooks his fingers around Bucky's, holding on the way he didn't--couldn't--all those years ago.
This is a sequel to Impact Winter, and was begun prior to The Avengers' release, so there are some things in it that don't match up with what happened in the movie, though I tried to incorporate canon as much as possible. Consider this slightly au.
Thanks to snacky and angelgazing for all the handholding and encouragement that they did while I was writing this, to dagnylilytable and marinarusalka for help with Russian, and to devildoll and laurificus for taking on the thankless task of betaing it and making it a better story.
Written for the West Wing title project.
Or you can read it all in one go on DW or AO3
~*~
Welcome to Wherever You Are
After he takes Bucky back to SHIELD headquarters in Times Square (the Helicarrier is still in dry dock), Steve doesn't see him again for fifty-eight hours. He waits around for the first twelve or so, before Darcy talks him into eating something, escorts him to the cafeteria, and chatters at him while he pushes food around on a plate.
"I'm sorry," he finally says. "I can't--I need to go back and see what's happening."
"They're still questioning him," she says.
"It's been twelve hours."
"First they did a quick medical exam," she says, sipping calmly on her soda. "And then they had to wait until Professor Xavier arrived." She sticks her fork into his plate and spears half a meatball. "You're not gonna eat that, are you?"
Steve shoves the plate over to her and stands. She sighs, drops the fork, and gets up with him, grabbing both plates and making him feel like a jerk for leaving the clean-up to her.
"All right," she says, more serious than he's ever seen her outside of mission briefings. "But you know they're not going to let you see him."
"I have to try."
"Of course you do."
Natasha is leaning against the wall outside the interrogation room, arms crossed over her chest, the repeated tap of one red nail against her elbow equal to a full-scale meltdown from anyone else. He doesn't like to think about what that composure costs her.
Darcy glances between them and attempts a strained smile that Natasha doesn't return.
"You can go now," he says, and Darcy flees, the click of her boot heels loud on the linoleum floor.
Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, but he just leans against the wall opposite her and crosses his arms over his chest, as well.
Steve's not sure how long the two of them stand there, staring at the blank gray walls--long enough for him to count the cracks in the ceiling four times--but Coulson comes by and collects them for a briefing that goes in one ear and out the other. He vaguely recalls hearing something about a potential imminent threat from Latveria.
"Get some sleep," Fury says when it's done. "We'll let you know what develops." It takes Steve a second to realize he means with Latveria, not with Bucky.
Darcy walks him back to his quarters, and he knows Coulson thinks he's clever, using her, using their friendship, this way. Which isn't fair--he knows Darcy probably wants to help him (he knows Coulson probably wants to help, too). But he just can't deal with her right now.
"You want to talk?" she asks. "Or play cards or something?"
"I don't need a babysitter," he says as gently as he can.
"Are you really going to sleep?"
Steve laughs softly, no humor in it. "I'm going to try."
Darcy puts a hand on his arm and goes up on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You've got my number if you need me."
"Thanks, Darcy." He hesitates, then, "Go home."
She gives him a nod and a tight smile that tells him more than anything else how worried she is. But she doesn't understand that he's not the one who needs to be worried over right now.
He manages four fitful hours of tossing and turning, nightmares of watching Bucky fall playing out over and over, the sick jolt in his gut as he falls after him waking him each time. He's had the nightmares since the day it happened, and they've never gotten any easier to bear.
He gives it up as a bad job and heads down to the briefing room, which is dim and quiet. He thinks about calling Darcy, even though it's after two in the morning. She'd pick up, but there isn't really anything he can say, so he doesn't.
Natasha joins him at some point after three. "They've moved him to a holding cell," she says.
Steve pushes a hand through his hair. "I don't suppose they're allowing any visitors."
She huffs softly. "Not at this hour. And certainly not you or me."
He reaches out and takes her hand. She shoots him a surprised look but lets him hold it for a little while. It's warm and callused and feels deceptively fragile. He wonders vaguely about the last time she held hands with someone; he can't imagine it happening very often, which is kind of sad, though he's sure she wouldn't appreciate him feeling that way.
She takes her hand back and he's starting to wish he'd brought a deck of cards when both their phones ring at the same time.
The lights go up in the briefing room and this time they're sent out to stop a group of HYDRA agents who've hijacked a jet out of JFK.
All his old angry feelings about HYDRA have resurfaced and at least now he gets to hit things. It only takes a couple of hours, but he's able to sleep for a while afterwards, right up until the dreams start again and he watches Bucky fall and fall and fall.
Even a hot shower doesn't make him feel any better. He's glaring at the coffee maker on the counter and wondering if they'd let him bring Bucky coffee (if he had any coffee in his kitchen; he knows they won't let him bring anything in from outside) when his phone goes off and he's summoned to another briefing.
"You look like shit," Tony says, pressing a large cup of coffee into his hand. Steve takes it gratefully and swallows a long gulp, burning the roof of his mouth in the process. "You know what this meeting is about? I thought the Fantastic Four took care of the Latverian thing. It was all over the news this morning. And we kicked HYDRA's ass last night, so it shouldn't be that." He glances over at Clint, whose eyebrows furrow in a weird kind of face-only shrug, and then says, "You were a little, um, intense last night. Is there something we should know about?"
Steve blinks at him, surprised, and takes a sip of coffee to cover until he can think of a response.
Coulson and Fury come in, then, saving him from having to answer. Darcy is with them and she gives him a small, apologetic smile that makes him anxious. He sets the coffee down on the table so he doesn't accidentally spill it all over.
"This is just an informational update," Coulson says. "A few days ago, Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff brought in the assassin known as the Winter Soldier."
Clint sits up a little straighter, but the rest of the team continues to look bored (Tony) or confused (Thor, Bruce). Natasha's expression is neutral, but she hasn't bothered to cover up the dark circles under her eyes.
"Is it true that he used to be Cap's partner?" Clint asks. They all turn to him in surprise. "What? I hear things." Steve glances over at Darcy, who avoids looking at him.
"Yes," Steve says before Coulson or Fury can say anything infuriating or wrong. "Yes. It's Bucky. He was brainwashed by the Russians, but he's okay now."
That makes Tony sit up straight and lean forward. "Seriously?"
Steve holds his gaze steadily. "Yes."
"That sounds like the plot of a bad Syfy channel movie."
"I know, right?" Darcy pipes up and then covers her mouth with her hand and gives Steve another one of those apologetic looks.
"It remains to be seen whether Sergeant Barnes is okay now," Fury says, cutting off the discussion. Steve can hear the quotes around "okay now"--it's one of the weird skills he's had to pick up here in the future--and he knows he should keep his mouth shut, but he can't.
"He is," Steve insists, ignoring Fury's powerful one-eyed glare.
"He's being examined by Professor Xavier," Coulson says, giving Steve an unreadable look, "while we determine whether he'll be brought up on charges."
"What?" Steve jumps to his feet.
Fury just keeps glaring at him. "This is not the time, Captain."
"But--" Steve looks over at Natasha, who looks unhappy, but shakes her head at him.
Coulson says, "While Sergeant Barnes is in custody, security will be heightened, so don't expect to get anywhere within the building without your ID badge."
"If there's anything further you need to know, you'll be informed." Fury sweeps out of the room, with Coulson and Darcy trailing him. She's talking low and fast in Coulson's ear while still shooting Steve apologetic glances. Clint claps him on the shoulder once and then follows her out. Bruce nods and goes with him.
"I am pleased your friend is no longer dead," Thor says gravely. "I hope you find that he is truly well."
"Thank you," Steve says. Thor inclines his head regally as he leaves. Steve turns to Natasha. "He needs a lawyer."
"I have a--friend who might be able to help," Natasha says. "He's here in the city."
Her hesitation over the word friend makes Steve uncomfortable, but it's not like he has a lawyer on retainer. "Can you give him a call?"
"I was already planning to."
"If your friend can't help," Tony says, "I've got a guy--a whole team of guys, actually. Probably some ladies, too." He looks at Natasha. "You still have access to Pepper's contacts, right?"
Natasha nods. "Yes."
Steve glances back and forth between them. "Thank you."
"Least I could do." Tony shrugs. "Okay, then. I have a thing I'm going to try to avoid going to now, so I need to leave before Pepper finds me. I'll see you all later."
"Natasha--"
"You're not the only one who cares about him, Steve." She takes his hand and squeezes it once before letting it drop. "I'll let you know when I've lined up a lawyer."
"Thank you," he says again. It sounds--feels--so inadequate.
He does what he usually does when he feels helpless and angry--he heads down to the gym in the basement and starts punching things. He knows it's small and petty, but he feels a vicious satisfaction in breaking things, especially things he doesn't have to pay for himself.
He's working up a good head of steam when he hears a cough behind him.
"Come on," Darcy says. "You can see him for a few minutes."
Steve wipes his sweaty forehead on his sweaty t-shirt and says, "Okay." He smiles at her, because he can't help himself, and because it's not her fault she works for his bosses.
She smiles back, a little tentatively. "You have ten minutes," she says, holding up a hand to silence him when he opens his mouth. "Fury didn't want to let you see him at all, and I had to convince Coulson that you could be in there for more than five minutes without either getting killed or giving up state secrets."
"But--"
"And when you're done, you're supposed to meet with Professor Xavier. Natasha's with him right now."
"Bucky's not psychic!" Steve yells. He has to take a couple of deep breaths to get hold of himself again. "He's not going to infect me with brainwashing or something. And he's--he's himself now. He shook off their mind control." He manages to keep his voice steady, even if he can't keep the anger out of it.
"I believe you," Darcy says. "But you know Fury's old school. Trust but verify and all that."
Steve grunts, annoyed but aware that Darcy's not the one throwing obstacles in his way. He's not willing to risk his chance to see Bucky by fighting with her.
They have to swipe their badges through no fewer than three checkpoints before they get back to the holding cell, and Steve almost ruins the whole thing when he sees Bucky is handcuffed to the table.
"What the hell--"
"Don't, Steve. Please." Bucky looks pale and sweaty, worse than he had when Steve found him on the roof of their apartment building, the circles under his eyes dark and deep. His hand trembles in the metal cuff.
"You still have rights. Even if--even if you are this Winter Soldier character, you still have rights as an American citizen. We're going to get you a lawyer."
Bucky's laugh is rusty, like he hasn't used it in a long time. He shakes his head, a fond smile on his face. "You haven't changed a bit."
Steve doesn't argue, though they both know that's not true. "Listen, I know that it all seems overwhelming now, but we're going to get you out of this. I'll make sure of it."
Bucky shakes his head. "You don't understand. It doesn't matter." He puts something on the table that looks like a hand encased in a metal glove, like some prototypical version of Tony's armor. But that can't be right. They wouldn't let a prisoner keep something like that.
"What--"
The fingers curl into a fist and Bucky says, "I went off-mission once, a few years ago." Steve nods. Fury had mentioned that in the briefing that started this whole thing. It feels like forever ago; Steve thinks it's only been four days, but it feels like another seventy years. "Ever since then, they've programmed my arm to release a slow-acting poison that only they have the antidote to." Bucky looks down at the metal fist resting on the table. "If I don't complete my mission, the poison is triggered." He sounds like a child reciting his multiplication tables by rote. "If I try to remove the arm, the poison is triggered." He looks up and meets Steve's gaze, mirthless smile on his face. "If I'm late to my rendezvous by more than an hour, the poison is triggered."
Steve blinks, still trying to process that Bucky's not wearing an armored gauntlet, that he has a metal arm. "Wait, what?"
"I was supposed to meet Lukin in Amsterdam eight hours ago."
Steve jumps up and pounds at the door. The guards rush in, guns at the ready, but Steve looks past them to where Darcy is leaning against the wall, staring intently at her phone. "Darcy, get Coulson and Fury down here now."
Eyes wide, she raises her phone to her ear. He gives her a tight, grateful smile, waves the guards away, and turns back to Bucky. "SHIELD has a state of the art medical facility. I'm sure they'll have an antidote to whatever it is. But you should have let someone know sooner."
Bucky snorts. "Steve, listen. It's not--I'm not--I told you, I'm not the guy you knew. I've done things--I can't--" He shakes his head, and Steve can see the tremor in his right hand, the one that's still flesh and bone. "They sent me to kill you, but you saved me."
Fury shoulders his way into the interrogation room then. "What's your problem, Captain Rogers?"
"Bucky needs medical attention, sir. He's being poisoned by his mechanical arm."
*
Several more hours pass before they let Steve see Bucky again. He spends most of them sitting in an uncomfortable chair outside the infirmary. He thinks of all the times Bucky waited for him when they were kids, in places that were a lot worse than this, that stank of illness and antiseptic and death. Here he smells only recycled air and the occasional whiff of soap when a nurse or doctor goes by.
Bruce sits down next to him at some point and gives him a tired smile. "It's a pretty nasty poison, but we were able to synthesize an antidote and get it into him in time. He's stabilized now. He's resting, but you can go in."
Steve nods and says, "Thanks," already pushing his way through the heavy white door, turning Bruce's words over in his mind and then filing them away.
Apparently "resting" is code for sedated, which he should have known, but his ability to hear the ironic quotes around words isn't working too well at the moment. Bucky's covered in tubes and tape, monitors blinking and beeping around him. He looks small and pale against the sheets, and Steve wonders if he's always been that fragile, and he'd just never noticed. He forces himself to look at the empty left sleeve of Bucky's hospital johnny; he can't flinch at the sight once Bucky is awake, so he'll have to get that out of the way now. It doesn't seem to have slowed him down any, and Steve's already got a bunch of texts from Tony about building a new, non-poisonous arm without even having to ask.
He settles heavily into the slightly more comfortable chair at Bucky's bedside, then reaches out and hooks his fingers around Bucky's, holding on the way he didn't--couldn't--all those years ago.
He doesn't know how long they sit like that, the only measure of time the beeping of the machinery and the soft counterpoint of their breathing; he thinks he dozes off but he can't be sure. The next thing he knows, Natasha is sitting next to him. She gives him a small smile that he returns, and takes his free hand in hers. He squeezes it in thanks, and drifts back into sleep, secure in the knowledge that someone else is watching over him and Bucky both.
*
Steve wakes suddenly, startled. Natasha is standing by the door. "Director Fury is on his way," she says. "I've been in touch with my friend, and James will have proper representation if it comes to that. Remind Fury of that if you need to." And then she slips away before Steve can ask why she won't stay.
"Captain," Fury says with a curt nod, filling the room with his presence, and a team of white-coated doctors trailing in his wake. "If you'll excuse us."
"No," Steve says. "I don't think I will."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm not leaving until Bucky's lawyer arrives."
"There's no need to bring lawyers into it," Fury says. His hail fellow well met act is starting to irritate Steve.
"There is if you're bringing him up on charges."
Fury shakes his head and gives an incredulous little laugh that is the fakest thing Steve's ever heard. "We're just planning to continue questioning him."
"I see." Steve clenches his jaw around the words he really wants to say, and instead he says, "I have a few questions of my own. Such as, why, if you had the world's best telepath interrogating him, nobody picked up on the fact that he was slowly being poisoned?"
"You're upset, Captain. I understand."
"Don't patronize me, sir. I'm not an idiot."
Fury sighs and rubs his forehead, dropping the false geniality. "Professor Xavier spent most of his time with...Sergeant Barnes trying to ameliorate the effects of the conditioning, and searching for hidden triggers. We're not sure he caught them all, and as a security precaution--for everyone involved--he will continue to do so until he's certain that...Sergeant Barnes is no longer programmed to kill you, himself, or anyone else."
"Himself? He tried to kill himself?"
"They implanted a kill switch, yes. Professor Xavier believes they also put in a subconscious command that made him unable to tell us that he was being poisoned until it was too late to save him. It's only because his programming was already breaking down that he was able to say anything about it at all. And luckily, Dr. Banner had some familiarity with the poison and was able to formulate an antidote fairly quickly."
Steve opens and closes his mouth, unable to come up with a response to that. He doesn't know why the horrible things people do to each other keep surprising him, but somehow they do.
"We'd like to make sure the Red Room didn't leave any other surprises for him, or for us."
"Fine, okay. I get it," Steve says. "But either Natasha or I need to be there when you do. Or we'll wait for the lawyer."
Fury glares at him, but Steve plants his feet and crosses his arms over his chest. He's not going anywhere any time soon, and Fury will just have to deal with it.
*
Steve and Natasha switch off sitting with Bucky while he's recovering. Steve would do it all himself, but it's clear that Natasha cares as much as he does, even if she's more guarded about showing it, and Steve tries to be generous, even if Bucky's attention is the one thing he's always been greedy for.
"I think he's waking up," she says softly as she leaves him to it.
"Okay," Steve says, trying not to get his hopes up.
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and he's almost asleep, head too heavy to keep upright anymore, when Bucky's eyes open. He stares at Steve, his pupils wide and black in the dim light.
"Hey," Steve says softly, not sure he's actually awake.
Bucky glances down at the tubes in one arm and the empty space where the other should be, then up at Steve again. He looks like he's just lost his best friend (and Steve knows all too well what that looks like).
"Seemed so real this time," he says quietly. "I should have known. Should have told you before how I feel." He mutters something in Russian that Steve doesn't understand. Then, more clearly, "Seeing you again would have made the poison worth it."
"Hey," Steve says again. "Don't say that. You're gonna be okay, Buck. You're gonna be fine."
But Bucky's eyes are already closed again.
The next time he wakes up, he looks at Steve like he didn't expect to see him there and says, "Huh." The surprised confusion is there and gone so quickly Steve's not sure he actually sees it before Bucky's face goes blank and then settles into a thoughtful frown. "I need to piss like a racehorse, and then I would kill for some pancakes." His mouth quirks in a familiar half-grin and he raises his voice. "Not literally, so tell your goons to stand down."
A nurse comes into the room and says, "Captain Rogers, if you'll excuse us?"
"Yes, ma'am," he says. "Of course."
Bucky rolls his eyes. "You mean I don't get a complementary sponge bath from Captain America?"
The nurse huffs but Steve laughs, almost lightheaded with giddiness at how much like himself Bucky sounds. "I don't think you're well enough to handle that," Steve says, and the sound of Bucky's startled laughter follows him out into the hall.
*
Steve settles into a weird new routine over the next few days. He spends most of his time in Bucky's room in the infirmary, reading or sketching, while Professor Xavier--a bald man in a wheelchair who actually looks like a professor--and Bucky stare silently at each other. Steve knows they're communicating telepathically, or at least, he believes Bucky when Bucky says they are, but there's no external proof, except that Bucky's exhausted, his face pale and drawn, after every session.
When Bucky's asleep, Steve searches the room, finds some scrubs and a faded cotton robe in the drawers next to the bed, a few extra boxes of tissues, and the crumpled up half-finished drawing of the IKEA ferry that Bucky'd taken from his apartment the day they got him back. Steve's surprised they let him keep it. He folds it carefully and tucks it into his back pocket for safekeeping. He also finds at least two bugs, which means there are probably three more he's not technologically sophisticated enough to suss out. The bugs don't matter, though, because they don't do much talking. Mostly they play gin.
Bucky looks up from the hole he's trying to stare into the bed (Steve doesn't think he has heat vision, but who knows anymore?) when Steve pulls out the cards and starts shuffling, and he grins. "Oh, I am so going to kick your ass, Rogers."
As if Steve hasn't heard this a million times over the years. "I seem to recall the last time we played, I was beating you to the tune of two hundred and fifty thousand to one hundred three thousand."
Bucky grunts. "I think my luck is about to change."
At that, Steve looks up and grins. "You may be right." He deals the cards deftly, and silently congratulates himself on how much more alive and engaged Bucky looks over a hand of cards.
On the fourth day, Maria Hill shows up and says, "Professor Xavier's been called away, but we're going to continue with the debriefing."
"Is that what we're calling it?" Bucky asks. "Feels more like I'm getting screwed with my briefs on."
"We're actually trying to help you," Maria says. The you bastard is implied, and if Steve picks up on it, he's sure Bucky gets it loud and clear. "If you don't want to be court martialed--"
"Didn't I get discharged when I died?"
"You were listed as missing in action, not dead," Steve says, having become intimately familiar with Bucky's (and everyone else's) files when he first got out of the ice.
"And if you're not in the army, I can just take you out back and shoot you," Maria says with an evil grin. "People disappear in SHIELD custody all the time."
Bucky laughs. "I like you." He sobers quickly. "But I'm not talking to you."
"Bucky--"
Maria sets her jaw and visibly swallows before she speaks. "I don't think you get a say."
"Can't Natasha do it?" Steve says before the situation escalates.
Bucky nods. "I'll talk to the Black Widow."
Maria stands and nods in return. "I'll have to check with Director Fury."
Steve follows her out into the hallway. "Look, I didn't mean to undermine your authority," he starts, but she shakes her head.
"Agent Romanoff is the best interrogator we have, Captain. The fact that he's willing to talk to her just makes it easier on all of us."
"You knew he wouldn't talk to you?"
She huffs softly. "I had an idea. I do know what I'm doing, you know." She points her chin towards Bucky's room. "You wait with him. Agent Romanoff will be along in a few minutes."
Steve goes back into the room to find Bucky out of the bed, poking around the narrow armoire against the wall. His hospital gown doesn't close all the way around the back and Steve takes in the view for a moment before he says, "There are some scrubs in the bottom drawer."
Bucky straightens up and glares at him. "Why didn't you say so?"
"I thought you knew."
"You thought I liked having my ass hanging out the back of this thing?"
Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the indignant expression on Bucky's face. When he's sure he's got it under control, he splays his right hand over his heart and says, as sincerely as he can manage, "I don't judge. If that's your thing--"
"I'll show you my thing."
"If I'm interrupting something, I can come back later," Natasha says. "I've already seen it."
"I haven't." Darcy is hovering outside the half-open door. Steve gives her a look that's meant to be quelling but she just shrugs. "Well, I haven't."
"Get dressed," Natasha says to Bucky, ignoring them. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it in a place I can get a decent cup of coffee."
She leads them to a small private dining room on the thirty-eighth floor that Steve didn't even know existed. The windows overlook Times Square, the lights bright and garish even during the day, and not that different from the Times Square of his youth. With the usual SHIELD efficiency and unobtrusiveness, a tray of muffins and bagels appears on the table and an urn of coffee--with real ceramic mugs and saucers--appears on the credenza against the inside wall. Once they've all served themselves (and Steve is a little embarrassed at the way his stomach rumbles in the presence of food), Natasha says, "Let's get down to business."
Darcy sets up one of those tiny voice recorders in the middle of the table and then flips open her notebook.
Bucky takes a seat at the far end of the table, facing the windows and the door. Steve takes the seat next to him and gives him an encouraging smile he doesn't return. He speaks in an even monotone, familiar to Steve from the war, from the first time he rescued Bucky from HYDRA and sat through one of these debriefings. It's the same tone the men used when they just wanted to get through the meeting and get to a hot shower and a bottle of rotgut. Steve had always joined them, even though he couldn't get drunk; he's pretty sure the drinking didn't help anyone forget, but he never stopped them from trying.
Steve tunes it out--he can always read the report later--and focuses on Bucky's face. The circles under his eyes are fading, but his hair is still long and lank and in need of cutting. Steve remembers doing it for him when they couldn't afford to go to the barber. He wonders if Bucky would let him do it now.
Armed with a thousand yard stare that's clearly not seeing anything in the room with them, Bucky finally talks about his latest mission, how his boss, Lukin, had wanted Captain America dead and SHIELD discredited and in disarray. "He was so pleased with his own cleverness that he half-assed the programming protocols," Bucky says. "I knew something was off as soon as I landed, but I didn't know what until I saw the apartment building."
"That's why you didn't arm the bombs?" Natasha's voice is businesslike, brisk. If Steve hadn't already known how wound up she was, just being in here and talking to Bucky, he never would have guessed.
"No. It just made me angry, that some poseur was living in our old apartment. I wondered if he had some fake version of--of the Commandos hanging around too." The hesitation is small but Steve hears it, knows Bucky was going to say, Some fake version of me before he changed his mind. "It wasn't until I searched the place--until I was looking at sketches of my own face--that I realized that it was really Steve." He blinks, then, and turns, his eyes going from dead and faraway to something more human, more recognizable. "It's really you."
Steve smiles. "Yeah," he says, reaching out and curling his fingers around Bucky's wrist for a brief moment. "It is."
*
Over the next few days, interspersed with his sessions with Professor Xavier, Bucky gives Natasha names and dates and details, fifty years' worth of missions. He talks until he's hoarse. She nods, as if none of this is news to her, and maybe it isn't. She was his partner on some of them, and she, more than anyone, knows what Bucky--what the Winter Soldier--was capable of. Steve fills up glass after glass of water for him, pleased at how well Bucky's doing and trying not to be jealous at the easy back and forth he shares with Natasha. Sometimes they communicate in half-sentences, quirked eyebrows, and nods, their own version of telepathy that leaves Steve a silent witness, an outsider.
After a particularly long session that was conducted almost entirely in that shorthand (and was gruesome in its detail when it wasn't), it must show on his face despite his efforts. Bucky gives him a searching look once he's settled back in the room they've assigned him, now that he's out of danger from the poison. (It's still a cell, as far as Steve's concerned--it locks from the outside, so the fact that there's a bathroom attached and a couple of pieces of furniture besides the bed is meaningless.)
"You and Natasha were close," Steve says, fussing over the plastic pitcher of water on the small dresser so he doesn't have to face that knowing blue gaze.
"She was the only good thing in that place," Bucky says, and Steve can't begrudge him that. "She made me remember what it was like to be human, and they punished us both for it."
Steve stops what he's doing and lays his hands flat on the dresser, forcing himself to breathe deep through the anger at what was done to Bucky, to Natasha, to all the nameless people he doesn't know about and can't help now. The fake wood laminate cracks under the pressure.
"I'm sorry," he says, finally, turning to face Bucky. "For both of you. But if you had to be there, then I'm glad you had each other."
Bucky nods once in understanding. Steve doesn't ask about it again. He knows everything he needs to.
*
The SHIELD doctors give Bucky a temporary prosthesis; it creeps Steve out by trying to look real and failing completely.
He lets Tony's calls go to voicemail, and when Tony shows up a couple of hours later, Steve doesn't know how to approach the subject, is afraid Bucky won't thank him for it however he does, but it turns out it doesn't matter. Tony is already ten steps ahead of him.
"I already told you I'm working on a new arm," he says, like he knows Steve's still chewing the words over and figuring out which ones are the right ones to use.
"Did you?"
"Yes. Several times, if you listened to your voicemail. An arm for your friend. Who I'd like to actually, you know, meet. And measure."
Steve blinks. "What?"
"Not like that." Tony makes a face at him. "I have no desire to get into a dick-measuring contest with your one-armed Russian assassin boyfriend."
"He's not Russian."
"Whatever, I know." Tony taps Steve's chest with his knuckles. "Seriously, Cap, I know. He's your BFF forever." He cocks his head thoughtfully. "Which is redundant, right? Because doesn't the second F stand for forever?"
Steve rubs his forehead, wondering if he's imagining the throbbing sensation behind his right eye or if Tony's sometimes just too much even for the serum to circumvent. "I haven't had nearly enough coffee for this conversation."
Tony makes a scoffing noise. "Caffeine doesn't affect you. And anyway, there probably isn't enough caffeine in the world--trust me, Pepper would know--but that's okay. I'll slow it down for the non-geniuses in the audience." He points at Steve. "That'd be you. I've already started working on a new arm, but I need to take some measurements so it will fit properly. I was able to get a rough idea from the old arm, but that thing was ancient, and who knows how well it actually fit."
Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, this time to stop his eyes from welling up. "Thanks," he says. "I just--Thanks." He claps Tony on the shoulder.
"Hey, yeah, no. Whatever you need, okay? Anything for a friend."
Steve nods, astounded as always by Tony's easy generosity. "Thanks." He leads Tony to the room Bucky's stashed in, the sound of Darcy's laughter floating down the hall as they get close.
She slips out of the room when they arrive, her cheeks pink and her mouth curved in a wide smile.
"I see you haven't lost any of your charm," Steve says, giving Bucky a narrow-eyed glare.
"You got yourself a swell dame there, Steve."
"She's not--" Steve starts, and then just waves a hand dismissively. "She's a good friend."
"No wonder they don't let you talk to the press anymore," Tony says, pushing past him. "I know you're not sleeping with her and even I didn't believe that denial. Of course, you didn't deny Sergeant Barnes here was your boyfriend, either." He turns towards Bucky with a grin. "It's always the quiet ones, am I right? I'm Tony Stark. Cap never shuts up about you. Don't worry. Only the good stuff. Or the not-classified stuff, anyway."
Bucky nods. "Stark. Good to meet you." He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his shirt. It requires a bit of undulating Steve finds fascinating. He's never seen Bucky move like that. "Let's get this over with."
"Usually when people strip for me, they're a lot more enthusiastic," Tony says.
"Am I getting paid?" Bucky asks. "Because for money, I can fake it."
Tony laughs. Steve rolls his eyes, because it's expected, but he's mostly taken up with staring at Bucky's chest--he's not as bulky as Steve (Thor's the only one who is), but he's well-built beneath a light dusting of curly dark hair, and Steve takes the lack of shirt as permission to look. He does a quick inventory of old, silvered scars that he's never seen before, and tries to avoid staring at the metal protruding from what's left of Bucky's shoulder.
He has to curl his hand into a fist to keep from reaching out and touching it, and he forces a smile that feels more like a grimace when Bucky catches his gaze.
As Tony looks over Bucky's shoulder, he talks non-stop about all the new features he's going to build into the permanent replacement arm, until finally, Bucky says, "I just need it to work. I don't need it to have a built-in rocket launcher."
"Wouldn't be big enough for that," Tony answers, "but I could probably give you a laser that pops out of the forearm. Or a repulsor in the palm. Maybe some firepower from the shoulder. That'd be pretty cool, right? And way better than that old piece of shit that was poisoning you." He grimaces in sympathy. Steve wonders if he knows his hand has settled on his chest over the arc reactor.
Steve lets Tony go on like that for a little longer but he can tell Bucky's losing patience, so he says, "Just an arm, Tony. No need for all the bells and whistles."
Tony pouts. "You guys are no fun."
"That's not what your girlfriend--" Steve clamps a hand over Bucky's mouth before he can finish that sentence, but Tony brightens.
"You're a funny guy, Barnes. I like that." He shoots finger guns at Bucky and then he leaves, clearly already lost in the changes he needs to make to the arm he's building. It's times like these that he most reminds Steve of Howard, but he's learned not to mention that.
"He really is just like his dad," Bucky says, as if he knows what Steve's thinking, but Steve shakes his head.
"No, I don't think so." But it's not a conversation either of them really wants to have, so Steve hands Bucky his pills and leaves him alone.
*
Three days later, Tony arrives with a prototype.
"That was fast," Steve says.
Tony scoffs. "Would have been here sooner, but you know how long it took to convince Fury I needed the adamantium before he'd let me have it?"
"Adamantium?" Bucky says. "Really?"
"Well, it's a titanium-adamantium alloy. Probably punch through a brick wall with this baby, no lasers required."
He unwraps the package and the arm gleams gold and red in the light. It looks like it should be part of the Iron Man suit.
"Seriously?" Bucky says.
"You don't like it? All the new Avengers have to wear Iron Man colors. Didn't they tell you?" He starts getting his tools out. Steve feels vaguely nauseated at the sight of them, at the idea that Tony's going to work on Bucky like he's one of the robots. Of course, Tony likes his robots better than he likes most people, so maybe it's a good thing. "Not that we've had any new recruits yet. But when they see how cool it looks on you, I'm sure people will start lining up to be a member."
"No."
"No? You don't think people are gonna line up to join our superhero supergroup? Not that we let just anyone join. Though I did like that spider kid. If he ever hits puberty I think he'd be a real asset."
"Am I not speaking English here?" Bucky glances at Steve and Steve can see the flash of worry in his eyes that maybe he really isn't before the cocky grin is back.
"Fine." Tony huffs a theatrical sigh. "I suppose you want it to look like a real arm? I can do that."
"No, not that either."
Steve puts a hand on Bucky's (good) shoulder. "Bucky--"
Bucky looks past Steve to Tony. "You've seen the old arm, right?"
Tony nods, silent for once.
"Then you know what I want, and what I want fixed," Bucky says, holding Tony's gaze.
Tony glances at Steve and then back at Bucky. "Like that, is it?"
Bucky just keeps glaring steadily at Tony.
"Of course it is." Tony laughs. "This shit is better than Days of Our Lives." He takes off his jacket and starts rolling up his sleeves. Steve still has no idea what just happened, and neither of them seems likely to enlighten him. "Let's get started. I'll redo the paint job after we know it works."
*
Bucky looks exhausted after Tony leaves, so Steve doesn't push him on it, and then the team is sent out on a mission, and after that, Steve is stuck with monitor duty on the newly air-and-sea-worthy Helicarrier for thirty-six hours because the others all found somewhere else to be. By the time he gets back to dry land, Bucky's new arm is installed and Tony's preening over the excellent craftsmanship. Pepper's smiling at them both, pleased with the opportunity for Stark Industries to provide superior prosthetic limbs to people all over the world. There's no time to ask Tony anything because Pepper's escorting him out while barking into a cell phone about donating arms to Doctors Without Borders.
"You're gonna love the arm, Cap," Tony calls out over his shoulder and lowers his sunglasses so he can wink.
Steve can only stare after them and shake his head.
"They're really engaged?" Bucky asks once they're gone.
"Yes," Steve says as emphatically as possible.
Bucky lets loose a dramatic sigh and slumps back against his pillows.
"It's okay," Steve says with a sly grin. "Everybody has a crush on Pepper."
Bucky snorts. "I see. I don't suppose Maria Hill is available."
"I don't know. I thought you didn't like her." He frowns. "I thought she didn't like you."
Bucky shrugs. He does it a lot more now than he used to, at least according to Steve's recollection. "She did threaten to shoot me. That's a good sign, isn't it?"
Steve laughs through the ache of recollection. "I always thought so."
Bucky hums thoughtfully, and then grimaces.
"The arm okay?"
"Yeah."
"Bucky." It comes out more of a reproof than he means.
"It's fine, Steve. Seriously. The guy's kind of obnoxious, but he knows what he's doing. It's definitely an improvement. Just takes some getting used to."
"Well, he is a genius."
"He mentioned that. Several times," Bucky says dryly.
"He's been a good friend to me," Steve says, staunchly defensive. "Tony can be a bit much sometimes, but he's a good guy."
"Yeah, I'll bet."
Steve doesn't know what to make of that. If he didn't know better, he'd think Bucky was jealous, but that's ridiculous. It's true, Steve didn't have a lot of friends before the serum, but Bucky had accepted the Commandos with open arms and genial wisecracks. It'd taken him a little longer to warm up to Peggy, but that was only because he'd been afraid she'd break Steve's heart. Steve had long ago given up on the idea that Bucky was interested in him--it wasn't acceptable in the forties and even if it had been, he knows Bucky still looks at him and sees the skinny, asthmatic kid he was, not the man he's become. Not that he wants Bucky to want him just because he's Captain America now, but--
"You okay there, Steve? You look like you got lost in your own head again." Bucky's voice is sympathetic and it shakes Steve out of the complicated tangle of thoughts he's caught up in.
"Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine. You ready to go?"
"Hell, yeah. I've been ready since I got here. Be nice to see Brooklyn again."
"Well, you still have to convince Fury and Coulson of that."
"Pfft. Piece of cake," Bucky says, smoothing his hair back.
Steve wishes he were that sure.
*
Steve argues that Bucky should be allowed to wear a uniform--his US Army uniform, complete with the medals he was awarded posthumously--for this meeting, but Fury vetoes that.
"It's not a formal hearing," Coulson reminds him as they settle around the conference table. "Professor Xavier says Sergeant Barnes has made excellent progress, and his cooperation during Agent Romanoff's interrogation is also a point in his favor."
"And I'll speak on his behalf," Steve says.
"It's not a formal hearing," Coulson repeats, conciliating. "It's unlikely that Sergeant Barnes will be brought up on charges, and Director Fury is no longer concerned that he's planning to blow us all to kingdom come--"
"Then there should be no problem releasing him into my custody," Steve says. He's in his service uniform, medals gleaming on his chest, willing to use every advantage he's got short of calling in Natasha's lawyer friend (Steve didn't need her to point out that it would only piss Fury off) to get Bucky away from SHIELD.
"But he still has a long way to go."
"He'll recover better at home, without everyone looking at him like they expect him to go berserk at any moment." Steve's seen what that did to Bruce, how he's still wary and skittish, though he's proved himself repeatedly since the Chitauri attack.
"If it were up to me, he'd be home with you already, but it's not." Coulson's sympathetic but unyielding; Steve has to respect that.
Natasha walks in at the head of the detail of SHIELD agents escorting Bucky. Steve would question why Fury trusts her so much, but since it works to Bucky's advantage, he doesn't.
He waits until Bucky is seated before settling in next to him. He knocks his foot against Bucky's and Bucky knocks back, and it's like they're ten years old again, sitting in church and trying to amuse each other under Sister Bernadette's watchful eye.
Fury sweeps in a few minutes later. He tosses a file folder down onto the table and says, "I don't know why you're so eager to leave us, Sergeant Barnes. Do you have complaints about how you've been treated while in SHIELD custody?"
Bucky leans back and looks as nonchalant as he can while still dressed in hospital scrubs. "I've been mind-fucked by the best, sir. Compared with that, this has been a day at the beach." Steve kicks him. "No, sir, I have no complaints."
"Professor Xavier seems to think you'll be better off in more familiar surroundings," Fury says. "If we let you go home with Captain Rogers, you will, of course, have daily screenings with a SHIELD telepath, and meet with a SHIELD-appointed therapist three times a week."
"For how long?" Steve interrupts.
Fury eyes him levelly. "For as long as necessary, Captain."
"And what about after that?"
"That's a matter for future consideration."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"It means we'll cross that bridge if it doesn't blow up in our faces first." Fury clasps his hands together and leans forward. "I'm giving you a chance, Barnes. Don't fuck it up or it's all our asses on the line." He waves a dismissive hand at them. "Now get the fuck out of my conference room. Darcy will be in touch with your schedule and other paperwork." He gets up and sweeps out of the room the way he swept in, leaving the rest of them sitting there, speechless.
"Well, that was..." Steve says, bemused.
"It was what it was," Natasha says as they get to their feet. "Don't spend too much time thinking about it." She squeezes Bucky's shoulder. "I'm glad for you, James. Make it count."
"Thank you, Natalia." His words are formal, but he hugs her and she lets him, and then she's gone, as well.
"Stop by my office," Coulson says. "Darcy has everything ready."
"Do I get clothes or are you gonna send me out into the world the way I came into it in the first place?"
"I'll see what we can arrange." And then he disappears, too.
"Come on," Steve says, pulling Bucky in for a too-quick hug of his own, "let's get you home."
*
Steve knows it's safer to take Bucky to the Tower, where there are both security measures and superheroes in case something goes wrong, but both Professor Xavier and the psychiatrist agreed that familiarity was more important than security at this point. Bucky had remembered New York before, and he'd specifically remembered their old apartment this time, and taking him there should be easier on him than forcing him to deal with the various personalities that make up the team all at once. And if Steve wants something that belongs just to him for a little while, well, he just doesn't mention that part.
Bucky slots back into Steve's life like he's always been there, like Steve was holding open the space where he belonged, and maybe on some level, he was; he'd never accepted Bucky's death before he'd put Schmidt's plane in the water, and he still hadn't, after waking up. He'd been stuck somewhere between anger and despair for a long time, and even helping save the world hadn't completely fixed that, until Fury had told them about the Winter Soldier, and Steve'd had a whole new set of failures to grieve, where Bucky was concerned.
Their first night together back in Brooklyn, they go grocery shopping (Steve hasn't spent much time in the apartment recently, and it shows in the emptiness of his cupboards) and they get Chinese takeout on the way home. They have a desultory conversation about baseball, neither of them managing to work up the appropriate amount of anger at the Dodgers' defection to Los Angeles, and except for the fact that they're eating dumplings instead of potatoes and eggs, it could almost be any night they've spent together over the years.
Steve makes up the second bedroom with his spare set of sheets and an afghan he got as a gift from one of the ladies at the Senior Center where he volunteers.
"The pillows are kind of flat," he says apologetically. "We can buy new ones in the morning."
Bucky laughs. "It's the Ritz compared to where I've been, pal."
"Yeah," Steve says, and his own laugh is a little shaky. "I guess it is."
He stays up late, reading through the reports Natasha had filed until he can't take it anymore, and then the book on PTSD the SHIELD therapist had given him when he'd begun his own therapy. He's only been asleep for an hour or so when the shouting starts. Steve flings himself out of bed and grabs the shield on the way into Bucky's room, which is where all the noise is coming from.
Bucky's standing in the middle of the room, bedside lamp raised like a weapon, his eyes cold and dead. He brings the lamp crashing down at Steve, and the base bounces off the shield. The impact jars Bucky awake and he shudders.
"Steve? What the hell? Did I hurt you?"
"No, though the lamp might be a lost cause." He takes it out of Bucky's now-loose grip and plugs it back into the wall. Amazingly, it lights up without a flicker. "Huh. Okay." The bed, which had been in the middle of the room, has been shoved up against the wall, as far away from the windows as possible. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. You know. I just woke up and didn't know where I was for a second."
"Uh huh." Steve wonders if any of the pills they sent him home with are sedatives, and if Bucky's just not taking them like he's supposed to. He'll have to keep a closer eye on that process.
"So you still sleep with that thing?" Bucky nods his chin at the shield.
"It's better than a teddy bear," Steve answers with a grin, and feels a little burst of pride when Bucky grins back, the same thing he always used to feel, before the war, when he made Bucky laugh.
The next night, Steve wakes to a shadow standing at the end of his bed. He has a moment of disorientation--is it real? Is he still dreaming?--but he blinks the sleep out of his eyes and the shadow reconfigures itself into Bucky. Steve would be lying if he said he didn't have a moment where his heart was in his throat, wondering if they'd all missed something, if Bucky was going to finally finish the job he'd been sent to do, but the moment passes quickly.
"Hey," he says, his voice thick with sleep.
"So, I, uh, might have knocked a glass of water over," Bucky says. He doesn't actually shift from foot to foot, but the sheepishness in his voice is ridiculously familiar to Steve from incidents such as the baseball through Mrs. Moynihan's parlor window and the appearance in Steve's pockets of the penny candy he used to steal from Woolworth's because they were Steve's favorite. (Steve used to trudge back down there with the pennies he'd scrounged up before he started working as a newspaper boy, and old Mr. Kenneally had always let it pass.)
"Okay," Steve says encouragingly.
"Into the bed. It's all wet and--"
Steve stifles a laugh, shifts over, and lifts the covers. "Idiot. Come on."
Bucky climbs in and Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. They used to do this as kids, and even later, when they were older and couldn't heat the apartment or when Steve was sick enough that Bucky thought he wouldn't make it through the night. And they had always shared a tent during the war. Nobody thought anything of it then, or if they had, they never said anything to Steve. Steve doesn't say anything now, and after that night, Bucky doesn't go back to the guestroom.
It's nice that some things haven't changed, because Bucky's different now, quieter, though his sleep is restless and full of exclamations in Russian that Steve doesn't understand. Having Bucky curled up behind him is its own kind of delicious torture. He doesn't even mind that Bucky's pushed his bed up against the wall, too.
Bucky scopes out all the exits wherever they go. That seems par for the course to Steve, who knows a thing or two about protecting yourself from the damage the world can inflict. He can be patient, can spend the rest of his life waiting for Bucky to uncurl and let him in again. He's happy just to have the chance.
So, he's got Bucky back, and if he's not exactly the same guy Steve knew, he's still Bucky in the ways that matter most, and that's all Steve really cares about. He knows the others all think he's some kind of naïve saint or something, even now, but Steve's always been selfish when it comes to Bucky, and that hasn't changed either.
*
Part 2
~*~
Avengers (2012); Steve/Bucky, Natasha, Darcy, Tony; adult; 21,000 words
Steve reaches out and hooks his fingers around Bucky's, holding on the way he didn't--couldn't--all those years ago.
This is a sequel to Impact Winter, and was begun prior to The Avengers' release, so there are some things in it that don't match up with what happened in the movie, though I tried to incorporate canon as much as possible. Consider this slightly au.
Thanks to snacky and angelgazing for all the handholding and encouragement that they did while I was writing this, to dagnylilytable and marinarusalka for help with Russian, and to devildoll and laurificus for taking on the thankless task of betaing it and making it a better story.
Written for the West Wing title project.
Or you can read it all in one go on DW or AO3
~*~
Welcome to Wherever You Are
After he takes Bucky back to SHIELD headquarters in Times Square (the Helicarrier is still in dry dock), Steve doesn't see him again for fifty-eight hours. He waits around for the first twelve or so, before Darcy talks him into eating something, escorts him to the cafeteria, and chatters at him while he pushes food around on a plate.
"I'm sorry," he finally says. "I can't--I need to go back and see what's happening."
"They're still questioning him," she says.
"It's been twelve hours."
"First they did a quick medical exam," she says, sipping calmly on her soda. "And then they had to wait until Professor Xavier arrived." She sticks her fork into his plate and spears half a meatball. "You're not gonna eat that, are you?"
Steve shoves the plate over to her and stands. She sighs, drops the fork, and gets up with him, grabbing both plates and making him feel like a jerk for leaving the clean-up to her.
"All right," she says, more serious than he's ever seen her outside of mission briefings. "But you know they're not going to let you see him."
"I have to try."
"Of course you do."
Natasha is leaning against the wall outside the interrogation room, arms crossed over her chest, the repeated tap of one red nail against her elbow equal to a full-scale meltdown from anyone else. He doesn't like to think about what that composure costs her.
Darcy glances between them and attempts a strained smile that Natasha doesn't return.
"You can go now," he says, and Darcy flees, the click of her boot heels loud on the linoleum floor.
Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, but he just leans against the wall opposite her and crosses his arms over his chest, as well.
Steve's not sure how long the two of them stand there, staring at the blank gray walls--long enough for him to count the cracks in the ceiling four times--but Coulson comes by and collects them for a briefing that goes in one ear and out the other. He vaguely recalls hearing something about a potential imminent threat from Latveria.
"Get some sleep," Fury says when it's done. "We'll let you know what develops." It takes Steve a second to realize he means with Latveria, not with Bucky.
Darcy walks him back to his quarters, and he knows Coulson thinks he's clever, using her, using their friendship, this way. Which isn't fair--he knows Darcy probably wants to help him (he knows Coulson probably wants to help, too). But he just can't deal with her right now.
"You want to talk?" she asks. "Or play cards or something?"
"I don't need a babysitter," he says as gently as he can.
"Are you really going to sleep?"
Steve laughs softly, no humor in it. "I'm going to try."
Darcy puts a hand on his arm and goes up on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You've got my number if you need me."
"Thanks, Darcy." He hesitates, then, "Go home."
She gives him a nod and a tight smile that tells him more than anything else how worried she is. But she doesn't understand that he's not the one who needs to be worried over right now.
He manages four fitful hours of tossing and turning, nightmares of watching Bucky fall playing out over and over, the sick jolt in his gut as he falls after him waking him each time. He's had the nightmares since the day it happened, and they've never gotten any easier to bear.
He gives it up as a bad job and heads down to the briefing room, which is dim and quiet. He thinks about calling Darcy, even though it's after two in the morning. She'd pick up, but there isn't really anything he can say, so he doesn't.
Natasha joins him at some point after three. "They've moved him to a holding cell," she says.
Steve pushes a hand through his hair. "I don't suppose they're allowing any visitors."
She huffs softly. "Not at this hour. And certainly not you or me."
He reaches out and takes her hand. She shoots him a surprised look but lets him hold it for a little while. It's warm and callused and feels deceptively fragile. He wonders vaguely about the last time she held hands with someone; he can't imagine it happening very often, which is kind of sad, though he's sure she wouldn't appreciate him feeling that way.
She takes her hand back and he's starting to wish he'd brought a deck of cards when both their phones ring at the same time.
The lights go up in the briefing room and this time they're sent out to stop a group of HYDRA agents who've hijacked a jet out of JFK.
All his old angry feelings about HYDRA have resurfaced and at least now he gets to hit things. It only takes a couple of hours, but he's able to sleep for a while afterwards, right up until the dreams start again and he watches Bucky fall and fall and fall.
Even a hot shower doesn't make him feel any better. He's glaring at the coffee maker on the counter and wondering if they'd let him bring Bucky coffee (if he had any coffee in his kitchen; he knows they won't let him bring anything in from outside) when his phone goes off and he's summoned to another briefing.
"You look like shit," Tony says, pressing a large cup of coffee into his hand. Steve takes it gratefully and swallows a long gulp, burning the roof of his mouth in the process. "You know what this meeting is about? I thought the Fantastic Four took care of the Latverian thing. It was all over the news this morning. And we kicked HYDRA's ass last night, so it shouldn't be that." He glances over at Clint, whose eyebrows furrow in a weird kind of face-only shrug, and then says, "You were a little, um, intense last night. Is there something we should know about?"
Steve blinks at him, surprised, and takes a sip of coffee to cover until he can think of a response.
Coulson and Fury come in, then, saving him from having to answer. Darcy is with them and she gives him a small, apologetic smile that makes him anxious. He sets the coffee down on the table so he doesn't accidentally spill it all over.
"This is just an informational update," Coulson says. "A few days ago, Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff brought in the assassin known as the Winter Soldier."
Clint sits up a little straighter, but the rest of the team continues to look bored (Tony) or confused (Thor, Bruce). Natasha's expression is neutral, but she hasn't bothered to cover up the dark circles under her eyes.
"Is it true that he used to be Cap's partner?" Clint asks. They all turn to him in surprise. "What? I hear things." Steve glances over at Darcy, who avoids looking at him.
"Yes," Steve says before Coulson or Fury can say anything infuriating or wrong. "Yes. It's Bucky. He was brainwashed by the Russians, but he's okay now."
That makes Tony sit up straight and lean forward. "Seriously?"
Steve holds his gaze steadily. "Yes."
"That sounds like the plot of a bad Syfy channel movie."
"I know, right?" Darcy pipes up and then covers her mouth with her hand and gives Steve another one of those apologetic looks.
"It remains to be seen whether Sergeant Barnes is okay now," Fury says, cutting off the discussion. Steve can hear the quotes around "okay now"--it's one of the weird skills he's had to pick up here in the future--and he knows he should keep his mouth shut, but he can't.
"He is," Steve insists, ignoring Fury's powerful one-eyed glare.
"He's being examined by Professor Xavier," Coulson says, giving Steve an unreadable look, "while we determine whether he'll be brought up on charges."
"What?" Steve jumps to his feet.
Fury just keeps glaring at him. "This is not the time, Captain."
"But--" Steve looks over at Natasha, who looks unhappy, but shakes her head at him.
Coulson says, "While Sergeant Barnes is in custody, security will be heightened, so don't expect to get anywhere within the building without your ID badge."
"If there's anything further you need to know, you'll be informed." Fury sweeps out of the room, with Coulson and Darcy trailing him. She's talking low and fast in Coulson's ear while still shooting Steve apologetic glances. Clint claps him on the shoulder once and then follows her out. Bruce nods and goes with him.
"I am pleased your friend is no longer dead," Thor says gravely. "I hope you find that he is truly well."
"Thank you," Steve says. Thor inclines his head regally as he leaves. Steve turns to Natasha. "He needs a lawyer."
"I have a--friend who might be able to help," Natasha says. "He's here in the city."
Her hesitation over the word friend makes Steve uncomfortable, but it's not like he has a lawyer on retainer. "Can you give him a call?"
"I was already planning to."
"If your friend can't help," Tony says, "I've got a guy--a whole team of guys, actually. Probably some ladies, too." He looks at Natasha. "You still have access to Pepper's contacts, right?"
Natasha nods. "Yes."
Steve glances back and forth between them. "Thank you."
"Least I could do." Tony shrugs. "Okay, then. I have a thing I'm going to try to avoid going to now, so I need to leave before Pepper finds me. I'll see you all later."
"Natasha--"
"You're not the only one who cares about him, Steve." She takes his hand and squeezes it once before letting it drop. "I'll let you know when I've lined up a lawyer."
"Thank you," he says again. It sounds--feels--so inadequate.
He does what he usually does when he feels helpless and angry--he heads down to the gym in the basement and starts punching things. He knows it's small and petty, but he feels a vicious satisfaction in breaking things, especially things he doesn't have to pay for himself.
He's working up a good head of steam when he hears a cough behind him.
"Come on," Darcy says. "You can see him for a few minutes."
Steve wipes his sweaty forehead on his sweaty t-shirt and says, "Okay." He smiles at her, because he can't help himself, and because it's not her fault she works for his bosses.
She smiles back, a little tentatively. "You have ten minutes," she says, holding up a hand to silence him when he opens his mouth. "Fury didn't want to let you see him at all, and I had to convince Coulson that you could be in there for more than five minutes without either getting killed or giving up state secrets."
"But--"
"And when you're done, you're supposed to meet with Professor Xavier. Natasha's with him right now."
"Bucky's not psychic!" Steve yells. He has to take a couple of deep breaths to get hold of himself again. "He's not going to infect me with brainwashing or something. And he's--he's himself now. He shook off their mind control." He manages to keep his voice steady, even if he can't keep the anger out of it.
"I believe you," Darcy says. "But you know Fury's old school. Trust but verify and all that."
Steve grunts, annoyed but aware that Darcy's not the one throwing obstacles in his way. He's not willing to risk his chance to see Bucky by fighting with her.
They have to swipe their badges through no fewer than three checkpoints before they get back to the holding cell, and Steve almost ruins the whole thing when he sees Bucky is handcuffed to the table.
"What the hell--"
"Don't, Steve. Please." Bucky looks pale and sweaty, worse than he had when Steve found him on the roof of their apartment building, the circles under his eyes dark and deep. His hand trembles in the metal cuff.
"You still have rights. Even if--even if you are this Winter Soldier character, you still have rights as an American citizen. We're going to get you a lawyer."
Bucky's laugh is rusty, like he hasn't used it in a long time. He shakes his head, a fond smile on his face. "You haven't changed a bit."
Steve doesn't argue, though they both know that's not true. "Listen, I know that it all seems overwhelming now, but we're going to get you out of this. I'll make sure of it."
Bucky shakes his head. "You don't understand. It doesn't matter." He puts something on the table that looks like a hand encased in a metal glove, like some prototypical version of Tony's armor. But that can't be right. They wouldn't let a prisoner keep something like that.
"What--"
The fingers curl into a fist and Bucky says, "I went off-mission once, a few years ago." Steve nods. Fury had mentioned that in the briefing that started this whole thing. It feels like forever ago; Steve thinks it's only been four days, but it feels like another seventy years. "Ever since then, they've programmed my arm to release a slow-acting poison that only they have the antidote to." Bucky looks down at the metal fist resting on the table. "If I don't complete my mission, the poison is triggered." He sounds like a child reciting his multiplication tables by rote. "If I try to remove the arm, the poison is triggered." He looks up and meets Steve's gaze, mirthless smile on his face. "If I'm late to my rendezvous by more than an hour, the poison is triggered."
Steve blinks, still trying to process that Bucky's not wearing an armored gauntlet, that he has a metal arm. "Wait, what?"
"I was supposed to meet Lukin in Amsterdam eight hours ago."
Steve jumps up and pounds at the door. The guards rush in, guns at the ready, but Steve looks past them to where Darcy is leaning against the wall, staring intently at her phone. "Darcy, get Coulson and Fury down here now."
Eyes wide, she raises her phone to her ear. He gives her a tight, grateful smile, waves the guards away, and turns back to Bucky. "SHIELD has a state of the art medical facility. I'm sure they'll have an antidote to whatever it is. But you should have let someone know sooner."
Bucky snorts. "Steve, listen. It's not--I'm not--I told you, I'm not the guy you knew. I've done things--I can't--" He shakes his head, and Steve can see the tremor in his right hand, the one that's still flesh and bone. "They sent me to kill you, but you saved me."
Fury shoulders his way into the interrogation room then. "What's your problem, Captain Rogers?"
"Bucky needs medical attention, sir. He's being poisoned by his mechanical arm."
*
Several more hours pass before they let Steve see Bucky again. He spends most of them sitting in an uncomfortable chair outside the infirmary. He thinks of all the times Bucky waited for him when they were kids, in places that were a lot worse than this, that stank of illness and antiseptic and death. Here he smells only recycled air and the occasional whiff of soap when a nurse or doctor goes by.
Bruce sits down next to him at some point and gives him a tired smile. "It's a pretty nasty poison, but we were able to synthesize an antidote and get it into him in time. He's stabilized now. He's resting, but you can go in."
Steve nods and says, "Thanks," already pushing his way through the heavy white door, turning Bruce's words over in his mind and then filing them away.
Apparently "resting" is code for sedated, which he should have known, but his ability to hear the ironic quotes around words isn't working too well at the moment. Bucky's covered in tubes and tape, monitors blinking and beeping around him. He looks small and pale against the sheets, and Steve wonders if he's always been that fragile, and he'd just never noticed. He forces himself to look at the empty left sleeve of Bucky's hospital johnny; he can't flinch at the sight once Bucky is awake, so he'll have to get that out of the way now. It doesn't seem to have slowed him down any, and Steve's already got a bunch of texts from Tony about building a new, non-poisonous arm without even having to ask.
He settles heavily into the slightly more comfortable chair at Bucky's bedside, then reaches out and hooks his fingers around Bucky's, holding on the way he didn't--couldn't--all those years ago.
He doesn't know how long they sit like that, the only measure of time the beeping of the machinery and the soft counterpoint of their breathing; he thinks he dozes off but he can't be sure. The next thing he knows, Natasha is sitting next to him. She gives him a small smile that he returns, and takes his free hand in hers. He squeezes it in thanks, and drifts back into sleep, secure in the knowledge that someone else is watching over him and Bucky both.
*
Steve wakes suddenly, startled. Natasha is standing by the door. "Director Fury is on his way," she says. "I've been in touch with my friend, and James will have proper representation if it comes to that. Remind Fury of that if you need to." And then she slips away before Steve can ask why she won't stay.
"Captain," Fury says with a curt nod, filling the room with his presence, and a team of white-coated doctors trailing in his wake. "If you'll excuse us."
"No," Steve says. "I don't think I will."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm not leaving until Bucky's lawyer arrives."
"There's no need to bring lawyers into it," Fury says. His hail fellow well met act is starting to irritate Steve.
"There is if you're bringing him up on charges."
Fury shakes his head and gives an incredulous little laugh that is the fakest thing Steve's ever heard. "We're just planning to continue questioning him."
"I see." Steve clenches his jaw around the words he really wants to say, and instead he says, "I have a few questions of my own. Such as, why, if you had the world's best telepath interrogating him, nobody picked up on the fact that he was slowly being poisoned?"
"You're upset, Captain. I understand."
"Don't patronize me, sir. I'm not an idiot."
Fury sighs and rubs his forehead, dropping the false geniality. "Professor Xavier spent most of his time with...Sergeant Barnes trying to ameliorate the effects of the conditioning, and searching for hidden triggers. We're not sure he caught them all, and as a security precaution--for everyone involved--he will continue to do so until he's certain that...Sergeant Barnes is no longer programmed to kill you, himself, or anyone else."
"Himself? He tried to kill himself?"
"They implanted a kill switch, yes. Professor Xavier believes they also put in a subconscious command that made him unable to tell us that he was being poisoned until it was too late to save him. It's only because his programming was already breaking down that he was able to say anything about it at all. And luckily, Dr. Banner had some familiarity with the poison and was able to formulate an antidote fairly quickly."
Steve opens and closes his mouth, unable to come up with a response to that. He doesn't know why the horrible things people do to each other keep surprising him, but somehow they do.
"We'd like to make sure the Red Room didn't leave any other surprises for him, or for us."
"Fine, okay. I get it," Steve says. "But either Natasha or I need to be there when you do. Or we'll wait for the lawyer."
Fury glares at him, but Steve plants his feet and crosses his arms over his chest. He's not going anywhere any time soon, and Fury will just have to deal with it.
*
Steve and Natasha switch off sitting with Bucky while he's recovering. Steve would do it all himself, but it's clear that Natasha cares as much as he does, even if she's more guarded about showing it, and Steve tries to be generous, even if Bucky's attention is the one thing he's always been greedy for.
"I think he's waking up," she says softly as she leaves him to it.
"Okay," Steve says, trying not to get his hopes up.
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and he's almost asleep, head too heavy to keep upright anymore, when Bucky's eyes open. He stares at Steve, his pupils wide and black in the dim light.
"Hey," Steve says softly, not sure he's actually awake.
Bucky glances down at the tubes in one arm and the empty space where the other should be, then up at Steve again. He looks like he's just lost his best friend (and Steve knows all too well what that looks like).
"Seemed so real this time," he says quietly. "I should have known. Should have told you before how I feel." He mutters something in Russian that Steve doesn't understand. Then, more clearly, "Seeing you again would have made the poison worth it."
"Hey," Steve says again. "Don't say that. You're gonna be okay, Buck. You're gonna be fine."
But Bucky's eyes are already closed again.
The next time he wakes up, he looks at Steve like he didn't expect to see him there and says, "Huh." The surprised confusion is there and gone so quickly Steve's not sure he actually sees it before Bucky's face goes blank and then settles into a thoughtful frown. "I need to piss like a racehorse, and then I would kill for some pancakes." His mouth quirks in a familiar half-grin and he raises his voice. "Not literally, so tell your goons to stand down."
A nurse comes into the room and says, "Captain Rogers, if you'll excuse us?"
"Yes, ma'am," he says. "Of course."
Bucky rolls his eyes. "You mean I don't get a complementary sponge bath from Captain America?"
The nurse huffs but Steve laughs, almost lightheaded with giddiness at how much like himself Bucky sounds. "I don't think you're well enough to handle that," Steve says, and the sound of Bucky's startled laughter follows him out into the hall.
*
Steve settles into a weird new routine over the next few days. He spends most of his time in Bucky's room in the infirmary, reading or sketching, while Professor Xavier--a bald man in a wheelchair who actually looks like a professor--and Bucky stare silently at each other. Steve knows they're communicating telepathically, or at least, he believes Bucky when Bucky says they are, but there's no external proof, except that Bucky's exhausted, his face pale and drawn, after every session.
When Bucky's asleep, Steve searches the room, finds some scrubs and a faded cotton robe in the drawers next to the bed, a few extra boxes of tissues, and the crumpled up half-finished drawing of the IKEA ferry that Bucky'd taken from his apartment the day they got him back. Steve's surprised they let him keep it. He folds it carefully and tucks it into his back pocket for safekeeping. He also finds at least two bugs, which means there are probably three more he's not technologically sophisticated enough to suss out. The bugs don't matter, though, because they don't do much talking. Mostly they play gin.
Bucky looks up from the hole he's trying to stare into the bed (Steve doesn't think he has heat vision, but who knows anymore?) when Steve pulls out the cards and starts shuffling, and he grins. "Oh, I am so going to kick your ass, Rogers."
As if Steve hasn't heard this a million times over the years. "I seem to recall the last time we played, I was beating you to the tune of two hundred and fifty thousand to one hundred three thousand."
Bucky grunts. "I think my luck is about to change."
At that, Steve looks up and grins. "You may be right." He deals the cards deftly, and silently congratulates himself on how much more alive and engaged Bucky looks over a hand of cards.
On the fourth day, Maria Hill shows up and says, "Professor Xavier's been called away, but we're going to continue with the debriefing."
"Is that what we're calling it?" Bucky asks. "Feels more like I'm getting screwed with my briefs on."
"We're actually trying to help you," Maria says. The you bastard is implied, and if Steve picks up on it, he's sure Bucky gets it loud and clear. "If you don't want to be court martialed--"
"Didn't I get discharged when I died?"
"You were listed as missing in action, not dead," Steve says, having become intimately familiar with Bucky's (and everyone else's) files when he first got out of the ice.
"And if you're not in the army, I can just take you out back and shoot you," Maria says with an evil grin. "People disappear in SHIELD custody all the time."
Bucky laughs. "I like you." He sobers quickly. "But I'm not talking to you."
"Bucky--"
Maria sets her jaw and visibly swallows before she speaks. "I don't think you get a say."
"Can't Natasha do it?" Steve says before the situation escalates.
Bucky nods. "I'll talk to the Black Widow."
Maria stands and nods in return. "I'll have to check with Director Fury."
Steve follows her out into the hallway. "Look, I didn't mean to undermine your authority," he starts, but she shakes her head.
"Agent Romanoff is the best interrogator we have, Captain. The fact that he's willing to talk to her just makes it easier on all of us."
"You knew he wouldn't talk to you?"
She huffs softly. "I had an idea. I do know what I'm doing, you know." She points her chin towards Bucky's room. "You wait with him. Agent Romanoff will be along in a few minutes."
Steve goes back into the room to find Bucky out of the bed, poking around the narrow armoire against the wall. His hospital gown doesn't close all the way around the back and Steve takes in the view for a moment before he says, "There are some scrubs in the bottom drawer."
Bucky straightens up and glares at him. "Why didn't you say so?"
"I thought you knew."
"You thought I liked having my ass hanging out the back of this thing?"
Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the indignant expression on Bucky's face. When he's sure he's got it under control, he splays his right hand over his heart and says, as sincerely as he can manage, "I don't judge. If that's your thing--"
"I'll show you my thing."
"If I'm interrupting something, I can come back later," Natasha says. "I've already seen it."
"I haven't." Darcy is hovering outside the half-open door. Steve gives her a look that's meant to be quelling but she just shrugs. "Well, I haven't."
"Get dressed," Natasha says to Bucky, ignoring them. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it in a place I can get a decent cup of coffee."
She leads them to a small private dining room on the thirty-eighth floor that Steve didn't even know existed. The windows overlook Times Square, the lights bright and garish even during the day, and not that different from the Times Square of his youth. With the usual SHIELD efficiency and unobtrusiveness, a tray of muffins and bagels appears on the table and an urn of coffee--with real ceramic mugs and saucers--appears on the credenza against the inside wall. Once they've all served themselves (and Steve is a little embarrassed at the way his stomach rumbles in the presence of food), Natasha says, "Let's get down to business."
Darcy sets up one of those tiny voice recorders in the middle of the table and then flips open her notebook.
Bucky takes a seat at the far end of the table, facing the windows and the door. Steve takes the seat next to him and gives him an encouraging smile he doesn't return. He speaks in an even monotone, familiar to Steve from the war, from the first time he rescued Bucky from HYDRA and sat through one of these debriefings. It's the same tone the men used when they just wanted to get through the meeting and get to a hot shower and a bottle of rotgut. Steve had always joined them, even though he couldn't get drunk; he's pretty sure the drinking didn't help anyone forget, but he never stopped them from trying.
Steve tunes it out--he can always read the report later--and focuses on Bucky's face. The circles under his eyes are fading, but his hair is still long and lank and in need of cutting. Steve remembers doing it for him when they couldn't afford to go to the barber. He wonders if Bucky would let him do it now.
Armed with a thousand yard stare that's clearly not seeing anything in the room with them, Bucky finally talks about his latest mission, how his boss, Lukin, had wanted Captain America dead and SHIELD discredited and in disarray. "He was so pleased with his own cleverness that he half-assed the programming protocols," Bucky says. "I knew something was off as soon as I landed, but I didn't know what until I saw the apartment building."
"That's why you didn't arm the bombs?" Natasha's voice is businesslike, brisk. If Steve hadn't already known how wound up she was, just being in here and talking to Bucky, he never would have guessed.
"No. It just made me angry, that some poseur was living in our old apartment. I wondered if he had some fake version of--of the Commandos hanging around too." The hesitation is small but Steve hears it, knows Bucky was going to say, Some fake version of me before he changed his mind. "It wasn't until I searched the place--until I was looking at sketches of my own face--that I realized that it was really Steve." He blinks, then, and turns, his eyes going from dead and faraway to something more human, more recognizable. "It's really you."
Steve smiles. "Yeah," he says, reaching out and curling his fingers around Bucky's wrist for a brief moment. "It is."
*
Over the next few days, interspersed with his sessions with Professor Xavier, Bucky gives Natasha names and dates and details, fifty years' worth of missions. He talks until he's hoarse. She nods, as if none of this is news to her, and maybe it isn't. She was his partner on some of them, and she, more than anyone, knows what Bucky--what the Winter Soldier--was capable of. Steve fills up glass after glass of water for him, pleased at how well Bucky's doing and trying not to be jealous at the easy back and forth he shares with Natasha. Sometimes they communicate in half-sentences, quirked eyebrows, and nods, their own version of telepathy that leaves Steve a silent witness, an outsider.
After a particularly long session that was conducted almost entirely in that shorthand (and was gruesome in its detail when it wasn't), it must show on his face despite his efforts. Bucky gives him a searching look once he's settled back in the room they've assigned him, now that he's out of danger from the poison. (It's still a cell, as far as Steve's concerned--it locks from the outside, so the fact that there's a bathroom attached and a couple of pieces of furniture besides the bed is meaningless.)
"You and Natasha were close," Steve says, fussing over the plastic pitcher of water on the small dresser so he doesn't have to face that knowing blue gaze.
"She was the only good thing in that place," Bucky says, and Steve can't begrudge him that. "She made me remember what it was like to be human, and they punished us both for it."
Steve stops what he's doing and lays his hands flat on the dresser, forcing himself to breathe deep through the anger at what was done to Bucky, to Natasha, to all the nameless people he doesn't know about and can't help now. The fake wood laminate cracks under the pressure.
"I'm sorry," he says, finally, turning to face Bucky. "For both of you. But if you had to be there, then I'm glad you had each other."
Bucky nods once in understanding. Steve doesn't ask about it again. He knows everything he needs to.
*
The SHIELD doctors give Bucky a temporary prosthesis; it creeps Steve out by trying to look real and failing completely.
He lets Tony's calls go to voicemail, and when Tony shows up a couple of hours later, Steve doesn't know how to approach the subject, is afraid Bucky won't thank him for it however he does, but it turns out it doesn't matter. Tony is already ten steps ahead of him.
"I already told you I'm working on a new arm," he says, like he knows Steve's still chewing the words over and figuring out which ones are the right ones to use.
"Did you?"
"Yes. Several times, if you listened to your voicemail. An arm for your friend. Who I'd like to actually, you know, meet. And measure."
Steve blinks. "What?"
"Not like that." Tony makes a face at him. "I have no desire to get into a dick-measuring contest with your one-armed Russian assassin boyfriend."
"He's not Russian."
"Whatever, I know." Tony taps Steve's chest with his knuckles. "Seriously, Cap, I know. He's your BFF forever." He cocks his head thoughtfully. "Which is redundant, right? Because doesn't the second F stand for forever?"
Steve rubs his forehead, wondering if he's imagining the throbbing sensation behind his right eye or if Tony's sometimes just too much even for the serum to circumvent. "I haven't had nearly enough coffee for this conversation."
Tony makes a scoffing noise. "Caffeine doesn't affect you. And anyway, there probably isn't enough caffeine in the world--trust me, Pepper would know--but that's okay. I'll slow it down for the non-geniuses in the audience." He points at Steve. "That'd be you. I've already started working on a new arm, but I need to take some measurements so it will fit properly. I was able to get a rough idea from the old arm, but that thing was ancient, and who knows how well it actually fit."
Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, this time to stop his eyes from welling up. "Thanks," he says. "I just--Thanks." He claps Tony on the shoulder.
"Hey, yeah, no. Whatever you need, okay? Anything for a friend."
Steve nods, astounded as always by Tony's easy generosity. "Thanks." He leads Tony to the room Bucky's stashed in, the sound of Darcy's laughter floating down the hall as they get close.
She slips out of the room when they arrive, her cheeks pink and her mouth curved in a wide smile.
"I see you haven't lost any of your charm," Steve says, giving Bucky a narrow-eyed glare.
"You got yourself a swell dame there, Steve."
"She's not--" Steve starts, and then just waves a hand dismissively. "She's a good friend."
"No wonder they don't let you talk to the press anymore," Tony says, pushing past him. "I know you're not sleeping with her and even I didn't believe that denial. Of course, you didn't deny Sergeant Barnes here was your boyfriend, either." He turns towards Bucky with a grin. "It's always the quiet ones, am I right? I'm Tony Stark. Cap never shuts up about you. Don't worry. Only the good stuff. Or the not-classified stuff, anyway."
Bucky nods. "Stark. Good to meet you." He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his shirt. It requires a bit of undulating Steve finds fascinating. He's never seen Bucky move like that. "Let's get this over with."
"Usually when people strip for me, they're a lot more enthusiastic," Tony says.
"Am I getting paid?" Bucky asks. "Because for money, I can fake it."
Tony laughs. Steve rolls his eyes, because it's expected, but he's mostly taken up with staring at Bucky's chest--he's not as bulky as Steve (Thor's the only one who is), but he's well-built beneath a light dusting of curly dark hair, and Steve takes the lack of shirt as permission to look. He does a quick inventory of old, silvered scars that he's never seen before, and tries to avoid staring at the metal protruding from what's left of Bucky's shoulder.
He has to curl his hand into a fist to keep from reaching out and touching it, and he forces a smile that feels more like a grimace when Bucky catches his gaze.
As Tony looks over Bucky's shoulder, he talks non-stop about all the new features he's going to build into the permanent replacement arm, until finally, Bucky says, "I just need it to work. I don't need it to have a built-in rocket launcher."
"Wouldn't be big enough for that," Tony answers, "but I could probably give you a laser that pops out of the forearm. Or a repulsor in the palm. Maybe some firepower from the shoulder. That'd be pretty cool, right? And way better than that old piece of shit that was poisoning you." He grimaces in sympathy. Steve wonders if he knows his hand has settled on his chest over the arc reactor.
Steve lets Tony go on like that for a little longer but he can tell Bucky's losing patience, so he says, "Just an arm, Tony. No need for all the bells and whistles."
Tony pouts. "You guys are no fun."
"That's not what your girlfriend--" Steve clamps a hand over Bucky's mouth before he can finish that sentence, but Tony brightens.
"You're a funny guy, Barnes. I like that." He shoots finger guns at Bucky and then he leaves, clearly already lost in the changes he needs to make to the arm he's building. It's times like these that he most reminds Steve of Howard, but he's learned not to mention that.
"He really is just like his dad," Bucky says, as if he knows what Steve's thinking, but Steve shakes his head.
"No, I don't think so." But it's not a conversation either of them really wants to have, so Steve hands Bucky his pills and leaves him alone.
*
Three days later, Tony arrives with a prototype.
"That was fast," Steve says.
Tony scoffs. "Would have been here sooner, but you know how long it took to convince Fury I needed the adamantium before he'd let me have it?"
"Adamantium?" Bucky says. "Really?"
"Well, it's a titanium-adamantium alloy. Probably punch through a brick wall with this baby, no lasers required."
He unwraps the package and the arm gleams gold and red in the light. It looks like it should be part of the Iron Man suit.
"Seriously?" Bucky says.
"You don't like it? All the new Avengers have to wear Iron Man colors. Didn't they tell you?" He starts getting his tools out. Steve feels vaguely nauseated at the sight of them, at the idea that Tony's going to work on Bucky like he's one of the robots. Of course, Tony likes his robots better than he likes most people, so maybe it's a good thing. "Not that we've had any new recruits yet. But when they see how cool it looks on you, I'm sure people will start lining up to be a member."
"No."
"No? You don't think people are gonna line up to join our superhero supergroup? Not that we let just anyone join. Though I did like that spider kid. If he ever hits puberty I think he'd be a real asset."
"Am I not speaking English here?" Bucky glances at Steve and Steve can see the flash of worry in his eyes that maybe he really isn't before the cocky grin is back.
"Fine." Tony huffs a theatrical sigh. "I suppose you want it to look like a real arm? I can do that."
"No, not that either."
Steve puts a hand on Bucky's (good) shoulder. "Bucky--"
Bucky looks past Steve to Tony. "You've seen the old arm, right?"
Tony nods, silent for once.
"Then you know what I want, and what I want fixed," Bucky says, holding Tony's gaze.
Tony glances at Steve and then back at Bucky. "Like that, is it?"
Bucky just keeps glaring steadily at Tony.
"Of course it is." Tony laughs. "This shit is better than Days of Our Lives." He takes off his jacket and starts rolling up his sleeves. Steve still has no idea what just happened, and neither of them seems likely to enlighten him. "Let's get started. I'll redo the paint job after we know it works."
*
Bucky looks exhausted after Tony leaves, so Steve doesn't push him on it, and then the team is sent out on a mission, and after that, Steve is stuck with monitor duty on the newly air-and-sea-worthy Helicarrier for thirty-six hours because the others all found somewhere else to be. By the time he gets back to dry land, Bucky's new arm is installed and Tony's preening over the excellent craftsmanship. Pepper's smiling at them both, pleased with the opportunity for Stark Industries to provide superior prosthetic limbs to people all over the world. There's no time to ask Tony anything because Pepper's escorting him out while barking into a cell phone about donating arms to Doctors Without Borders.
"You're gonna love the arm, Cap," Tony calls out over his shoulder and lowers his sunglasses so he can wink.
Steve can only stare after them and shake his head.
"They're really engaged?" Bucky asks once they're gone.
"Yes," Steve says as emphatically as possible.
Bucky lets loose a dramatic sigh and slumps back against his pillows.
"It's okay," Steve says with a sly grin. "Everybody has a crush on Pepper."
Bucky snorts. "I see. I don't suppose Maria Hill is available."
"I don't know. I thought you didn't like her." He frowns. "I thought she didn't like you."
Bucky shrugs. He does it a lot more now than he used to, at least according to Steve's recollection. "She did threaten to shoot me. That's a good sign, isn't it?"
Steve laughs through the ache of recollection. "I always thought so."
Bucky hums thoughtfully, and then grimaces.
"The arm okay?"
"Yeah."
"Bucky." It comes out more of a reproof than he means.
"It's fine, Steve. Seriously. The guy's kind of obnoxious, but he knows what he's doing. It's definitely an improvement. Just takes some getting used to."
"Well, he is a genius."
"He mentioned that. Several times," Bucky says dryly.
"He's been a good friend to me," Steve says, staunchly defensive. "Tony can be a bit much sometimes, but he's a good guy."
"Yeah, I'll bet."
Steve doesn't know what to make of that. If he didn't know better, he'd think Bucky was jealous, but that's ridiculous. It's true, Steve didn't have a lot of friends before the serum, but Bucky had accepted the Commandos with open arms and genial wisecracks. It'd taken him a little longer to warm up to Peggy, but that was only because he'd been afraid she'd break Steve's heart. Steve had long ago given up on the idea that Bucky was interested in him--it wasn't acceptable in the forties and even if it had been, he knows Bucky still looks at him and sees the skinny, asthmatic kid he was, not the man he's become. Not that he wants Bucky to want him just because he's Captain America now, but--
"You okay there, Steve? You look like you got lost in your own head again." Bucky's voice is sympathetic and it shakes Steve out of the complicated tangle of thoughts he's caught up in.
"Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine. You ready to go?"
"Hell, yeah. I've been ready since I got here. Be nice to see Brooklyn again."
"Well, you still have to convince Fury and Coulson of that."
"Pfft. Piece of cake," Bucky says, smoothing his hair back.
Steve wishes he were that sure.
*
Steve argues that Bucky should be allowed to wear a uniform--his US Army uniform, complete with the medals he was awarded posthumously--for this meeting, but Fury vetoes that.
"It's not a formal hearing," Coulson reminds him as they settle around the conference table. "Professor Xavier says Sergeant Barnes has made excellent progress, and his cooperation during Agent Romanoff's interrogation is also a point in his favor."
"And I'll speak on his behalf," Steve says.
"It's not a formal hearing," Coulson repeats, conciliating. "It's unlikely that Sergeant Barnes will be brought up on charges, and Director Fury is no longer concerned that he's planning to blow us all to kingdom come--"
"Then there should be no problem releasing him into my custody," Steve says. He's in his service uniform, medals gleaming on his chest, willing to use every advantage he's got short of calling in Natasha's lawyer friend (Steve didn't need her to point out that it would only piss Fury off) to get Bucky away from SHIELD.
"But he still has a long way to go."
"He'll recover better at home, without everyone looking at him like they expect him to go berserk at any moment." Steve's seen what that did to Bruce, how he's still wary and skittish, though he's proved himself repeatedly since the Chitauri attack.
"If it were up to me, he'd be home with you already, but it's not." Coulson's sympathetic but unyielding; Steve has to respect that.
Natasha walks in at the head of the detail of SHIELD agents escorting Bucky. Steve would question why Fury trusts her so much, but since it works to Bucky's advantage, he doesn't.
He waits until Bucky is seated before settling in next to him. He knocks his foot against Bucky's and Bucky knocks back, and it's like they're ten years old again, sitting in church and trying to amuse each other under Sister Bernadette's watchful eye.
Fury sweeps in a few minutes later. He tosses a file folder down onto the table and says, "I don't know why you're so eager to leave us, Sergeant Barnes. Do you have complaints about how you've been treated while in SHIELD custody?"
Bucky leans back and looks as nonchalant as he can while still dressed in hospital scrubs. "I've been mind-fucked by the best, sir. Compared with that, this has been a day at the beach." Steve kicks him. "No, sir, I have no complaints."
"Professor Xavier seems to think you'll be better off in more familiar surroundings," Fury says. "If we let you go home with Captain Rogers, you will, of course, have daily screenings with a SHIELD telepath, and meet with a SHIELD-appointed therapist three times a week."
"For how long?" Steve interrupts.
Fury eyes him levelly. "For as long as necessary, Captain."
"And what about after that?"
"That's a matter for future consideration."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"It means we'll cross that bridge if it doesn't blow up in our faces first." Fury clasps his hands together and leans forward. "I'm giving you a chance, Barnes. Don't fuck it up or it's all our asses on the line." He waves a dismissive hand at them. "Now get the fuck out of my conference room. Darcy will be in touch with your schedule and other paperwork." He gets up and sweeps out of the room the way he swept in, leaving the rest of them sitting there, speechless.
"Well, that was..." Steve says, bemused.
"It was what it was," Natasha says as they get to their feet. "Don't spend too much time thinking about it." She squeezes Bucky's shoulder. "I'm glad for you, James. Make it count."
"Thank you, Natalia." His words are formal, but he hugs her and she lets him, and then she's gone, as well.
"Stop by my office," Coulson says. "Darcy has everything ready."
"Do I get clothes or are you gonna send me out into the world the way I came into it in the first place?"
"I'll see what we can arrange." And then he disappears, too.
"Come on," Steve says, pulling Bucky in for a too-quick hug of his own, "let's get you home."
*
Steve knows it's safer to take Bucky to the Tower, where there are both security measures and superheroes in case something goes wrong, but both Professor Xavier and the psychiatrist agreed that familiarity was more important than security at this point. Bucky had remembered New York before, and he'd specifically remembered their old apartment this time, and taking him there should be easier on him than forcing him to deal with the various personalities that make up the team all at once. And if Steve wants something that belongs just to him for a little while, well, he just doesn't mention that part.
Bucky slots back into Steve's life like he's always been there, like Steve was holding open the space where he belonged, and maybe on some level, he was; he'd never accepted Bucky's death before he'd put Schmidt's plane in the water, and he still hadn't, after waking up. He'd been stuck somewhere between anger and despair for a long time, and even helping save the world hadn't completely fixed that, until Fury had told them about the Winter Soldier, and Steve'd had a whole new set of failures to grieve, where Bucky was concerned.
Their first night together back in Brooklyn, they go grocery shopping (Steve hasn't spent much time in the apartment recently, and it shows in the emptiness of his cupboards) and they get Chinese takeout on the way home. They have a desultory conversation about baseball, neither of them managing to work up the appropriate amount of anger at the Dodgers' defection to Los Angeles, and except for the fact that they're eating dumplings instead of potatoes and eggs, it could almost be any night they've spent together over the years.
Steve makes up the second bedroom with his spare set of sheets and an afghan he got as a gift from one of the ladies at the Senior Center where he volunteers.
"The pillows are kind of flat," he says apologetically. "We can buy new ones in the morning."
Bucky laughs. "It's the Ritz compared to where I've been, pal."
"Yeah," Steve says, and his own laugh is a little shaky. "I guess it is."
He stays up late, reading through the reports Natasha had filed until he can't take it anymore, and then the book on PTSD the SHIELD therapist had given him when he'd begun his own therapy. He's only been asleep for an hour or so when the shouting starts. Steve flings himself out of bed and grabs the shield on the way into Bucky's room, which is where all the noise is coming from.
Bucky's standing in the middle of the room, bedside lamp raised like a weapon, his eyes cold and dead. He brings the lamp crashing down at Steve, and the base bounces off the shield. The impact jars Bucky awake and he shudders.
"Steve? What the hell? Did I hurt you?"
"No, though the lamp might be a lost cause." He takes it out of Bucky's now-loose grip and plugs it back into the wall. Amazingly, it lights up without a flicker. "Huh. Okay." The bed, which had been in the middle of the room, has been shoved up against the wall, as far away from the windows as possible. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. You know. I just woke up and didn't know where I was for a second."
"Uh huh." Steve wonders if any of the pills they sent him home with are sedatives, and if Bucky's just not taking them like he's supposed to. He'll have to keep a closer eye on that process.
"So you still sleep with that thing?" Bucky nods his chin at the shield.
"It's better than a teddy bear," Steve answers with a grin, and feels a little burst of pride when Bucky grins back, the same thing he always used to feel, before the war, when he made Bucky laugh.
The next night, Steve wakes to a shadow standing at the end of his bed. He has a moment of disorientation--is it real? Is he still dreaming?--but he blinks the sleep out of his eyes and the shadow reconfigures itself into Bucky. Steve would be lying if he said he didn't have a moment where his heart was in his throat, wondering if they'd all missed something, if Bucky was going to finally finish the job he'd been sent to do, but the moment passes quickly.
"Hey," he says, his voice thick with sleep.
"So, I, uh, might have knocked a glass of water over," Bucky says. He doesn't actually shift from foot to foot, but the sheepishness in his voice is ridiculously familiar to Steve from incidents such as the baseball through Mrs. Moynihan's parlor window and the appearance in Steve's pockets of the penny candy he used to steal from Woolworth's because they were Steve's favorite. (Steve used to trudge back down there with the pennies he'd scrounged up before he started working as a newspaper boy, and old Mr. Kenneally had always let it pass.)
"Okay," Steve says encouragingly.
"Into the bed. It's all wet and--"
Steve stifles a laugh, shifts over, and lifts the covers. "Idiot. Come on."
Bucky climbs in and Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. They used to do this as kids, and even later, when they were older and couldn't heat the apartment or when Steve was sick enough that Bucky thought he wouldn't make it through the night. And they had always shared a tent during the war. Nobody thought anything of it then, or if they had, they never said anything to Steve. Steve doesn't say anything now, and after that night, Bucky doesn't go back to the guestroom.
It's nice that some things haven't changed, because Bucky's different now, quieter, though his sleep is restless and full of exclamations in Russian that Steve doesn't understand. Having Bucky curled up behind him is its own kind of delicious torture. He doesn't even mind that Bucky's pushed his bed up against the wall, too.
Bucky scopes out all the exits wherever they go. That seems par for the course to Steve, who knows a thing or two about protecting yourself from the damage the world can inflict. He can be patient, can spend the rest of his life waiting for Bucky to uncurl and let him in again. He's happy just to have the chance.
So, he's got Bucky back, and if he's not exactly the same guy Steve knew, he's still Bucky in the ways that matter most, and that's all Steve really cares about. He knows the others all think he's some kind of naïve saint or something, even now, but Steve's always been selfish when it comes to Bucky, and that hasn't changed either.
*
Part 2
~*~