Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Steve sees the abomination of an assassin in person, he's legitimately scared. Drop to the floor, army crawl scared. Because it—they? he?—moves like it's immune to gravity, like it's a lightweight android in half a human suit. It pulls whatever's in its way—people and objects alike—and crushes them with a surreal strength. And Steve works with superheroes, men in metal suits that can lift as much as him, gods and monsters of men with unreal abilities—but the way the Winter Soldier moves, in person, is unreal. Steve would have continued to think of his opponent that way, but he's watching the way it climbs the hood of an armored van and slings a rifle over its shoulder. He watches the clinical shots, one after another, assailants falling in waves. He's still watching when Natasha pulls on his shoulder and makes him duck. A bullet flies over his head, missing by inches. Steve signs his thanks and rolls to the right. Tasha goes left. Time to see who or what it's after.

More bullets zip past Steve, and he starts running faster, moving side to side in arcs and zig-zags to try and lose the attacker. He spots a fire escape and starts climbing it, hand over hand over foot over foot, moving as fast as he physically can. His chest is tighter than it's been in years. At the top, he rolls off the ladder and raises the spare gun Tasha gave him, backing up several feet, but keeping several others between him and the edge of the roof.

Its left arm reaches the ledge first, shining in the mid-afternoon sun. Whatever it is pulls itself up, fingers digging into the concrete. Steve gets low and makes himself as small as possible, watching it rise. All-black eyes appear under dark, sweat-stringy hair as it climbs up and settles on its haunches. Its face means murder, twisted in disgust as it eyes Steve from top to bottom. Crouching across from him, only some twenty feet away, it pauses. It pulls off the dark mask covering the lower half of its face, revealing a crooked grin and completing a picture Steve hasn't seen in years.

That face makes the world drop out from under Steve. And even with those eyes, even with the blackened scars along his cheeks, even with the patches of uneven shiny skin, even with the sheer delight of having cornered Steve on his face, Steve's able to recognize him.

"Bucky," he says, the name setting off small explosions in his head. "Bucky," he repeats, louder, because the assassin doesn't seem to recognize the name. Steve drops the gun and moves into a defensive crouch. "I'm not here to hurt you—"

"I am."

There's a bright blast of pain as he charges Steve, punching him square in the stomach. Even with a hand made of flesh and bone, burning cold as dry ice, Steve thinks he hears a few cracks from his side. He rolls back, slapping the ground with his left hand to absorb the shock. His right hand cradles the bruise forming beneath his ribs. Then, Bucky is right in front of him again, above him, with the worst kind of look on his face. It's a look that means, "I hate you." It's a look that means, "I'm going to kill you." It's a look that Steve hasn't even seen in his nightmares.

Bucky—or not-Bucky, as the case may be—aims another punch square at Steve's head, this time, with the metal arm. Steve barely manages to roll out of the way, head rattling from the dent not-Bucky leaves in the concrete. He pushes himself up on his hands and knees, moving into a crouch, one hand back to nursing his ribs. His other hand reaches out, palm flat, a surrender. "Bucky, stop. You don't want to do this."

"Who're you talking to?" he asks, in the same faux-innocent, half-mischievous tone Steve associates with being teased about having a crush. Not-Bucky walks forward, fists balled at his side. He looks over Steve, hiding them in shadow, looking down at him. In the dark, Steve can make out the faint glimmer of distant stars in not-Bucky's eyes, in the shiny parts of the scars on his face and the dark splashes that look like cellophane over burns. Even beaten to hell with black hole eyes and intent to kill in cold blood, the Soldier looks like Bucky. Steve wants to vomit, and he's not sure if it's from the broken rib or heartache.

"What did they do to you?" Steve asks, voice going faint. He can't make himself move. His world feels upside down, and moving would knock him loose, send him tumbling into the endless sky ahead. Is that not-Bucky's plan? Kick Steve down, drop him into a bottomless blue pit, just like he'd done to Bucky?

A rush of silver out of the corner of Steve's eye alerts him to the fist heading toward his face. He blocks it with his forearm, but still ends up with a bruise on the side of his head, along with two on his arm. One from the impact, where metal met skin, and one from the place it hit his head. Steve rolls to the side and pushes out to sweep the Soldier, knocking him down and using the momentum to stand up. Not-Bucky turns the graceless fall into a roll, standing right out of it, yards away from Steve.

Steve isn't sure which of them is the worse for wear. Bucky looks old—not in his face, not in his mannerism or appearance, but in his being, like something weathered him harder in seventy years apart. What did they do to him? He hardly even looks like Bucky at all, but now that Steve's seen his full face, there's no mistaking him for anyone else. Steve can pick out the familiar lines on his long-ago friend that move the same exact way.

"Bucky, please— you're my friend—"

The Soldier responds by kicking himself forward into the air, coming at Steve with a flurry of punches. Some of them land. Steve blocks some, too, but not-Bucky still manages to push him to the edge of the roof. Steve can feel the open air at his back, the ten storey drop. He could probably survive it, sure, but it would hurt like hell. And if the Winter Soldier moved fast enough, Steve wouldn't survive. Not after a fall like that and a clean shot through the head.

"Bucky," he pleads, "don't—"

"Why do you keep using that name?" it asks in Bucky's voice, with Bucky's face. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

And then Steve's falling, falling, falling.

He lands in his bed with the wind knocked out of him, scrambling awake from the hypnagogic jerk. There's sweat all over his face and back. Steve sits up and turns, legs falling on the floor next to his bed. The stars in him burn hot and his mind is a rapid flashing montage of fight after fight, bruise after bruise, different angles of the same look on someone else's face. He buries his face in his shirt, using it to mop up the sweat before tossing it to the floor.

Steve groans and gets to his feet, heart pounding. He's not going to sleep for a while after that. Might as well do something to soothe the aching memories. He doesn't check the time as he stands and walks to the bathroom, not even bothering to turn on lights as he goes. His eyes are good enough to see well in the dark. In the mirror, they offer up a faint glow, just brighter than the glow clinging to the rest of his body. Steve gets in the cold shower and sits there.

After a few minutes of letting the water take care of the stickiness covering him, Steve leans on the wall and lets himself go. The tears start to fall, coming down his face in thick bunches, virtually indistinguishable from the shower water pouring all over him. It's a cold shower, and he's in an apartment anyway, so Steve stands there and lets it run over him for another hour. He's dripping and cried out, face red and body temporarily soothed, when he gets out.

Steve ruffles his hair under the towel and dries off a step at a time, facing away from the mirror. He hasn't been sleeping much since—since that, and his reflection has taken to morphing into not-Bucky's when he's least expecting it, aiming punches that should break through glass and Steve crouching on the floor even though nothing's happening. His days are short and his nights are long. He barely remembers to eat, so he eats a lot at a time to make up for it. Steve's turned into a messy-haired, unshaven mess and he's sick of it.

The only way to fix it, he knows, is to search out Bucky, or whatever's inhabiting the body that used to belong to Bucky. The Winter Soldier was probably Bucky at some point. He's read the experiment logs and reports. He knows what HYDRA did to Bucky and it burns him inside. There had to be some way he could've known back then, some way to force himself to tell his commanding officers about the talks of making another supersoldier with a black hole instead of stars. But he didn't. Steve is stuck in the future, with no way to warn Bucky that the hypotheticals he'd overheard would eventually come to undo him.

Steve hits his head against the wall, the same way Bucky did when they were kids and he screwed something up, and closes his eyes. No use regretting the past, even if it was only yesterday. Steve only has now, and he intends to use it to its fullest extent.

To find Bucky.

Chapter Text

"How's the search?" Steve asks, entering Sam's apartment. He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over the back of a worn-out chair. It's plenty warm outside, and Steve is almost dripping with sweat, but he needs that jacket for protection.

"You look like shit," Sam says warmly.

"Thanks."

"And, no. No progress." Sam crosses his arms. "Are you still looking for him? That can't be—"

"I'd really rather not have this conversation again."

"Well, fine. You are Captain America." Sam heads to the counter and leans against it, turning back around to face Steve. "You up for brunch?"

"I'm not hungry." Steve usually consumes much, much more food than the average human. The stars filling his veins burn through calories incredibly quickly. He's barely eating enough to sustain himself as is, but his stomach is full of anxious holes. Besides, how fair would it be if he's sitting around eating nice food while Bucky's god-knows-where, probably starving? Steve's guilty conscience keeps him from eating because—after all—it's ultimately his fault that Bucky is alone, hurt, lost, and probably starving. His heart rests in his stomach.

"You know you're not fooling me with that act." Sam inspects Steve's face, giving him the awkward, twitchy feeling like he's naked on an operating table again.

"I'm just worried."

"Maybe he doesn't want you to look for him," Sam comments, pulling out a chair and sitting at his little round breakfast table. He gestures to the chair Steve hung his jacket on. Steve obliges.

"I hadn't thought of that," Steve deadpans. "But I need to find him."

"You don't need to do anything." Sam drums his fingers on the table. "There's a saying that the only things certain in life are death and taxes, and you don't have to pay taxes if you're willing to face the consequences of choosing to not. And I don't think you have to worry about dying."

Steve snorts and leans back in his chair. He brings up a hand to cover his mouth like he's trying to stifle a laugh as he stifles a yawn. "It'd be nice to not have to worry about everyone I love dying."

"Steve," Sam says, once again serious. "This whole Winter Soldier—"

"Don't call him that," Steve snaps.

"—this Bucky business isn't good for you. When was the last time you actually slept?"

"Last night," Steve truthfully lies.

Sam looks at him, straight-faced, wearing that look that says 'I'm not getting paid to sit and listen to you bullshitting yourself.' "It's not good for you to—"

"I don't need to sleep that much."

"You might not, but your body still needs it." Sam eyes him critically. "Take a break. You deserve one."

Steve stands so abruptly and with such force that his chair gets knocked over. His eyes are more white than blue and branching, glowing lines criss-cross his skin, highlighting his veins. "Why does everyone want me to give up on him?"

"I am not telling you to give up on him. I'm telling you to rest before you tear yourself apart." Sam, frustratingly calm, sips from a glass of water.

Steve almost laughs, then he almost sobs, then he dry-heaves before undergoing a dizzy spell that makes him sit down. He falls forward and buries his face in his arms. His shoulders shake but he doesn't cry. It's the weirdest feeling, being unable to cry; Steve's just run dry of tears. After a miserable eternity of breathing against his own skin, Steve looks up at Sam.

"Sam, I think I—"

"I know, Steve. I know." Sam takes a deep breath, looking at Steve's exhausted, slumped shoulders. He considers what he's about to say, words in the back of his mouth. Half against his better judgment, he says, "There might be a place."

Steve looks up at him with glassy, bruised eyes, but the stars in them glow. Sam regards the lines on his face.

"I'll only tell you if you sleep tonight."

Steve's burning up inside, core vibrating and making his breaths shaky, eyes refusing to focus ahead of him. There's an address on a scrap of paper in his left hand, almost steaming from being soaked through with sweat and held in a tight, fiery grip. It doesn't matter if it's readable; Steve knows the address by heart now. He's walked past the apartment building too many times to forget the way there, the miles-long walk from his door to a door he dares not enter.

Every night since Sam gave him the address, he's gathered the courage to leave his apartment—only to lose it just before entering the dark building under flickering streetlights. He's lost sleep out there, fighting with himself, leaning casually against the wall next to the door like he's on a smoke break, ready to go back into the complex. But he never manages it. Some part of him hopes that the man living in the seventh room on the third floor decides to leave, but part of him thinks that might be worse. He doesn't want to startle his once-friend.

It takes a week for Steve to actually walk inside. He leaves the address in the pocket of the jeans he isn't wearing and leaves the house with nothing but his keys and ID on him. He even made sure none of the clothing he's wearing was from Stark—who knows what kind of stuff that man could've put in those sweaters? Steve's never liked being watched, and he thinks it's probably worse when it's an ally watching him.

Steve breathes quickly in the slowly warming late-January air, exhuming plumes of golden stardust and pale frost. He's warm, almost uncomfortably so, even though the ground is still icy with sleet and his fingers are stiff with the chill. It radiates off him, visible as the glow coming off his skin, most of it hidden by his clothing but some of it open to the air. Steve glows, and it's clearer here, in the dark and cold, than anywhere else.

Eventually, maybe around three in the morning, Steve presses on the stiff metal knob and falls into the apartment building lobby. The metal is still stiff with frost as he pulls the door closed behind him. There are a few flickering yellow bulbs above the vacant desk, above which key chains and keys hang from several small hooks.

Steve takes the stairs two at a time, following the numbers and ending up on the third floor, just as he'd figured. He glances down both sides of the hallway, checking the numbers on the nearest doors to see which way to go. Immediately to his left is room 342, and 343 is to his right. Left it is. He counts down the numbers until he's outside apartment 337, staring at the dull pewter numbers tacked on the splintering wooden door. Behind this door is someone who used to be a friend, more than a friend. His head swims with regret as he looks at the numbers.

Was there more he could have said? If not between frenzied blows, then all those years ago when he knew they were both on the same side? Wasn't there a way he could have made it more obvious than sharing heat in thousands of beds across Europe, picking one man before all others to stand next to him, giving back the life he owed? Steve owes the man behind the door his life, several hundred times over. As much as he may have denied it in years past, he clearly saved Steve's life back there, in the numbing rapids and sharp cutting rocks.

Steve wants to speak—he needs to speak, really, needs to reach out and communicate and thank. But his throat is empty of words and his lungs empty of wind. The only noise he can make is a faint, soft cough, the kind that precedes tears hot as the sun. He wonders if the occupant of the apartment in front of him is even awake. They were both insomniacs, in New York the first time and in the army. Steve is still an insomniac, in New York the second time. But he wonders if They managed to get inside and reprogram even that aspect of his former friend. Was that even possible?

Sure, he's heard rumors about what They did as part of the Winter Soldier project. He hasn't had the strength to look at the detailed report files, because he can't stomach the way they called a human being an "it," a "subject," called his best friend an "undesirable insubordinate impulse." It makes him sting in his stomach and behind his eyes to even remember the words he'd glanced over. He feels like he's drowning in guilt for not talking to someone about the information his friend had overheard, not reporting that there were possibly scientists trying to replicate the miracle of Captain America drawing power from black holes. Maybe if he'd said something, none of this would have happened. Maybe if he'd reported it, his friend could have laid to rest in glaciers and water instead of Them finding him and fishing him out of the sea.

Years of illegal research went into the creation of what the man behind the door was. Years of tests and tests and tears went into the product that attacked Steve, tried to kill him, came so close to swallowing him whole. Buried deep in the project reports was the real name of Project Winter Soldier, the name nobody used outside of hushed conversations over the subject and dry speeches to black hole-powered centrifuges. They called him Project Star-Eater.

That was what he was meant to do, after all, wasn't it? It goes back to physics—every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Steve is made of stars stitched together in the shape of human flesh, Steve is humanity embedded in stardust and flaming gas. Of course there has to be some force, some creation made only to cancel him out. There has to be a body whose electrical impulses were replaced by black holes, whose eyes were the dark sparks spit out at the other end of the universe thousands of millennia later.

But god damn it, did it have to be Bucky?

Steve's golden glowing hands feel oversized and out of place in the dreary dark hallway. If he looks close enough, he can see the edges of the glow on his skin warp down and forward, like it's getting pulled through the crack under the door, eaten by a ravenous celestial body on the other side. He hopes it's just his imagination. His damned imagination, which conjures up a million and one ways he could die by his old friend's hands. That invented and destroyed thousands of scenarios where they could have been happy together, holding perfectly human hands under a perfectly normal fading sky, side-by-side on a swing-set over day-warmed sand sitting before the ocean. That connected the stars over his head into the shapes of dead and dying lovers made of fire and ash.

Ashes to ashes, Steve thinks, and not for the first time. Things like him weren't meant to exist. And things like the man behind the door—those were never meant to be imagined. The stars are the realm of the gods. Who would play god and channel them into flesh and bone?

There is nothing behind the door, as far as Steve's aware, but that means that everything is behind the door at the same time. His hands curl and uncurl, making and breaking fists at his sides to the timing of his breaths. Inhale, exhale. Roll, relax. His palms are sweaty again, skin slick against itself when he squeezes his hands at his sides. Talking to tabloid reporters and heads of state, presidents and prime ministers, monarchs and ambassadors—it all pales in comparison to the monumental task before Steve.

He never had a problem talking to Bucky before. Why is it different now? Have the years changed them both beyond recognition? Steve recalls how much older the Soldier had seemed, not in the lines on his face or the sag of his skin, but in the resignation in his breath. Did the Soldier see the same qualities in Steve? Or was Steve too foreign to a consciousness They fabricated over the remains and ruins of his best friend?

How much of the Soldier is fiction and murder made from scratch and how much of it is some remnants of the man called Bucky Barnes? Are they only united by a body or do they have the same memories? Is Bucky in there?

Steve would call out the name, but he remembers the way it made starless eyes go wide and blank during those last few encounters. He remembers the tense skin under his hands that threatened to tear itself apart under the weight of an old name.

Instead, Steve says nothing. He looks ahead of himself, just at the numbers on the door, and approaches the old, moldering wood. Just knocking, just asking if the person on the other side is okay. Nothing too complicated. So why is his mouth going dry? Why are his words leaving his throat?

Steve lifts his hand and knocks quietly, knuckles barely brushing the door. He tries again, managing a solid few raps on the wood before stopping. He would knock all night if that's what it would take to draw out the resident.

He hears nothing—what a surprise—and feels no shift under his feet. Steve crouches down and looks under the crack in the door. There isn't anything on the other side, simply darkness and nothing more. He stands again and stares the door down, seeing if it will back down first. The door doesn't budge, blissfully unaware of the blistering stars staring at it and melting the metal numbers.

Steve reaches out to knock, but stops himself at the handle on the door. The metal warms quickly under his touch, soft and pliant. "I-I want to talk to you," he says to the seam between the wall and the door. He only means to rattle the knob, make some noise to alert the occupant, really. Even Captain America can't break locks just by turning handles. But the handle moves under his hand, turning down and drawing inward. When Steve relaxes the handle, the door is slightly open, an unseen presence in the dark beckoning for Steve to enter.

He obliges.

Chapter Text

“The hell are you doing here, Captain?” asks a voice in the darkness, and Steve glances around but he can't find it. He pulls the door closed behind him and it clicks, locking him in with the darkness and a man he'd rather not see. “Thought I was a closed case.” It lacks something Steve can't place—a sort of liveliness, venom.

It was dark in the hall but darker in here, and it takes a few moments for Steve's eyes to adjust. There's no light in the room—if there's a window somewhere, it's covered well enough that the streetlights don't leak inside. It's a cold and heavy darkness, a burden on Steve's shoulders. He can see the glow coming off his hands and hides them in the pockets of his jeans. There's hardly any furniture, a minifridge and microwave stacked in the furthest corner, stacks of what look like spiral-bound notebooks, and an uneven lump against the wall that looks like it could be a mattress on the floor.

Steve approaches the mattress like a curious dog investigating something that smells dangerous. Before he gets too close, he shifts into a crouch, edging closer and closer to the bedside.

“What, aren't you going to say something?” The voice is hoarse and dry, bitter as coffee grounds. “'Bucky, it's just me.'” He can still mimic Steve's voice almost exactly, and it's hard to tell whether he's mocking Steve or just teasing. “'Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Christ, what did they do to you?'” A sharp, harsh laugh. “'Bucky, you're my friend—'”

“I didn't know if you still wanted to be called that,” he says, finally.

There is silence from the bed. And then, “Isn't much else to call me, is there?”

Steve closes the distance and sits, cross-legged, by the side of the mattress. There's a heavy comforter over it, covering its occupant—Bucky. A shiver runs through the body under the comforter and he shifts, rolling over to face Steve. Eyes like the night sky over the light-polluted city bore holes in Steve's chest.

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing.” But Steve's uncertain, doesn't know why he's here. It's hard to look at those eyes. It's hard to look anywhere, from the blackened scar above his eyebrow to the parallel lines from his temple to his cheek. They look like they could be glowing, but then again, they could just be reflecting Steve's glow.

“Can't you be honest with me? Your old friend?” Bucky's voice is flat, and he's not even bothering to mimic inflection and emotion in it. He's too tired. Steve can see it in the bruises under his eyes and the pale lines on his forehead.

“Have you been sleeping?” Steve asks instead, concerned.

“Does it look like I've been doing anything else?” He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. From this angle, Steve can see that the shiny dark scar tissue is glowing, albeit not as brightly as those eyes. It's a soft, dark-hued glow that doesn't illuminate as much as it indicates. “Why are you here?”

“I...” Steve begins, but he can't find the words to end it. There's no point in being dishonest. “I was worried about you,” he confesses.

Bucky snorts. “You're always worried about me.”

“How long have you been in here?” It's only been a month and a half since—since everything, since Steve woke up alive and mostly dry, since the leak went through and the helicarriers went down. Nobody had seen the Soldier between then and now.

“A while.” He looks at Steve out of the corners of his eyes. “How long have you been here?”

“Just— just a couple hours.” It's hard to speak around the painful shard of jagged glass in his chest. He feels like he's coughing up blood whenever he opens his mouth. “Are you okay?”

“The hell's that supposed to mean.” Bucky isn't asking. He's just stating the question. His eyes close, but Steve still feels the shadows of a lingering gaze.

Steve swallows the hundreds of questions bubbling behind his tongue. He never thought it would be so hard to voice a clarification. "It means, are you feeling okay? Are you eating? Drinking water? Are you sick?"

Bucky swats at the air and looks at Steve through lowered lids. "Stop," he says, with half of a crooked smile. "Worrying, I mean. That's my job." He extracts his arm from under the comforter and offers it to Steve, letting it hang over the side of the mattress. It's startlingly cold, and not just in the way that everything seems cold when you run at 125F on a normal day. He gasps when Steve takes his hand.

"You're— are you sure you're not sick?" Steve wishes he'd thought to bring a thermometer. But he doesn't even have one at home, doesn't bother keeping one around. It's kind of useless. His internal temperature fluctuates a bit, but it's no big deal. Besides, he's not sure if regular medical thermometers are even calibrated to read temperatures of more than 110F in humans. Not like he's really human, anymore.

"That's how it is now," Bucky says with half a shrug. "Always like that. Always cold. Guess I get what you mean when you say you're always too warm." The half-smile returns for a moment. "Sorry for giving you shit about it."

"It's okay." Steve strokes the back of Bucky's hand with his thumb, feeling over familiar delicate bones and muscles. He glances up the rest of Bucky's arm, bare and prone, checking for wounds or bruises. There are none, just scars. And uneven patches of skin the same color as his eyes, like tiny lakes of darkness grafted in his skin.

"Those are where they tried to replace it with lab-grown cells. Hyper-regenerative something. Made out of skin samples and supernovas, like everything else."

Steve hadn't realized it, but his hand had moved up Bucky's arm, investigating the patches. They're slick and almost silky, a little rubbery, and even colder than the rest of his skin. There's something wrong-feeling about them, but Steve can't place it. He presses on one of them gently, until Bucky hisses and closes his eyes in pain. "Sorry."

"They hurt sometimes. Doesn't even need touching," he says through grit teeth. He sucks a deep breath through his teeth. "There's more."

Steve doesn't want to see whatever else They did to Bucky, but it doesn't matter since he's already moving. He rolls so he's laying on his stomach, then pushes down the comforter. His skin goes tight and goosebumps cover the exposed parts. There are more patches of ink and gold dust on his back, larger ones, with hints of redness at the edges where regular skin meets the grafts. They almost sparkle in the dark. All of his skin gives off that soft, dark glow, but these spots glow brighter.

"Can I...?"

"Go ahead."

Steve places his wide palm on a stretch of untouched skin, getting a small shock from the cold. Bucky shivers under him. He carefully inspects the slick skin with air-light touches. It's cold, but the edges where it turns to normal skin are a little warm, a little swollen, like they're infected. He traces around the grafts, feeling the bumps of stitches just under the skin. The uneven rings of redness around every patch feel infected.

"They fucked up," says Bucky, "they fucked up bad and the seams got infected. S'not going to hurt me, but it stings and itches." Steve feels rougher parts where Bucky must have scratched or picked at the reddened skin. His hand comes to rest at the small of Bucky's back, half on normal skin and half on changed skin.

"I'm so sorry," says Steve.

"It's their fault, not yours." Bucky loosens, breathing out, making himself limp and small. "You couldn't do anything."

Steve shakes his head. "I should've tried to look for you. I should've told someone about that stuff you overheard."

"I don't blame you," Bucky says softly. "You didn't know. I didn't know. We can't change that."

"I wish I could."

"Hmph." Bucky turns his head so he's looking at Steve with those empty hollow eyes. "You don't owe me anything, Steve."

"You've saved my ass more times than I can count," he argues.

"Be quiet." Bucky's eyes flutter. "The least you can do is help me forget."

"How?"

Bucky inches out from under Steve's hand, so he's pressed up against the wall. "Share your heat?"

"Gladly." Steve slips off his shoes, his jacket, his jeans, until he's down to boxers and a shirt. It looks warm under that comforter, and he doesn't want to overheat. He sits on the edge of the mattress first, then lifts up the blanket and covers his legs. Bucky relaxes back into him as he lays down. "Better?"

"Much."

Bucky is the large expanse of coldness against his chest and stomach and hips and legs, and it's refreshing to feel cooled for once. Steve tucks one arm under his head and drapes the other over Bucky's shoulders. Bucky curls against Steve, not holding him but trying to be held.

For the first time in months, Steve sleeps without nightmares.

Simple tasks give him more trouble than they used to. Bucky's never been normal, never been anything close to it, but “waking up” from the brainwashing, from the control, makes everything a lot more difficult. It's like he was cognitively reshuffled. Not that They cared much for his cognitive processes—it didn't matter how they worked so long as there was a kill-switch for them, a signal that would turn them off and override them with someone else entirely.

There is no cognition as the Soldier. He can feel the split, prod at it like a tongue at a loose, bleeding tooth, but there's nothing on the other side of the divide. Even though he's not there during those times, he can remember it afterward, and there's no one there with him. There's no co-pilot, no malign sentience behind the killing hands. He's off, no thoughts, no feelings, just a response to code words and a plan of action.

Bucky hates it. He hates the way it feels to prod at the gross empty thing in his head, how it feels like a jar cracked open and spilling out sickness even though there's nothing inside. He hates the way the emptiness takes over his thoughts sometimes, until suddenly he's looking through the crack under the door with a knife in his hand. How he drifts off and imagines opening the door to Steve, already battered and bruised, seeking shelter, how he imagines twisting his neck and shattering his spine. Sleeping is the only way he can avoid it; at least then he's in control of when his dreams take over from reality.

Didn't make it any easier when he dreamed he woke up next to Steve's slowly-cooling, lifeless body, and endless blood on the sheets.

He washes his hands, wipes off his pale and cold-sweaty face, stares at the mirror with the crack in the top corner. How many times has he longed to finish the job? Bucky barely recognizes himself in his own face anymore, just in glances out of the corner of his eye, when he's turning and neither his eyes nor his scars are visible. In those moments, he can pretend he's still human. He puts a hand to his stinging neck and grimaces, bowing forward over the sink. Of course, it's always interrupted by the inflamed stitches where his skin met foreign objects, where his hyperactive immune system became confused by this skin that's the same as his own, yet so different. There are a few places where normal skin has grown over the grafts, but healing stopped long ago. Bucky's not holding out any hope.

Heat helps the stinging, so he douses a washcloth with hot water and puts it on his neck, head tilted to keep it on. Hot water drips down his front and back, making lines of dampness on his underwear. The lights in the bathroom flare, suddenly too bright, and Bucky flicks the switch by the door. A patch on his leg flares, then, and he sinks to the floor. The door clicks closed behind his back. He groans and curls his knees to his chest.

The next thing he knows, the lights are on in the bathroom and his head is in the shaded spot under the sink, pressed against tile that's only warm to him, facing mildew stains in the drywall. There's noise above him, and Bucky just wants it all to stop. There's a face bright as a star in the corner of his vision, and he knows it's important, he just can't remember why and his head hurts too much to look directly at it.

Bucky doesn't realize he was repeating mindless, numb words like “go away” and “stop it” until there's a warm hand over his lips. He stops moving, heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped butterfly. Sometimes it's better to go limp, to grin and bear it. Sometimes that makes it hurt less.

“Bucky?” asks a voice, and it's strange because nobody's called him that in so, so, so long that it feels unreal to think about having been a person called Bucky. Who is he? He has numbers in his head, printed along the inside of his right forearm and inked on the underside of every plate of his left like a serial number. He has bright lights in his head, and sudden darkness, and a desperate void yawning in his chest. He has terror, too, but he's long since learned to ignore it.

Hands like the sun hold him up, wrap around his body, press soothingly against the aching infection in his skin. They raise him, carrying him effortlessly, metal and dying star mass and all, and bring him into the dark. They deliver him to somewhere warm and soft, and Bucky falls unconscious again.

Chapter Text

Steve returns the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. He hardly sees his own apartment anymore, and as much as he wants to bring Bucky back there with him, the question is always met with a staunch "no." But there's a queen-sized bed there instead of an old double mattress on the floor, real food and real appliances, warm air and quiet hallways and thick walls.

But the risk is too great for Bucky, who still sees SHIELD as HYDRA, who looked through the curtain and saw nothing where They'd put god in him. Most nights, he wakes up crying, or screaming, or shivering. Some nights, he wakes up and sneaks out of bed, perches on the counter in front of the mirror, watches Steve sleep from a safe distance. That far away, he can't hurt Steve.

Steve, who brings him fresh food and makes him shower regularly. Who sits him down and very carefully shaves his face, who deftly avoids the tender grafts on his neck and chin. Who sees stars in eyes where others only see void. Steve is a living, breathing miracle, and sometimes he's too light for Bucky to touch. But as much as he thinks about bruising Steve, it's him who wakes up with the same bruises every day, the same uneven patches of skin that are shadowed like bruises and ringed with infection.

In their first week of not quite living together again, Bucky only has three severe dissociative episodes, the kind where he finds himself on the floor, or fighting shadows, or scratching and scratching at the itching stitches just out of reach. He only forgets Steve's name a couple of times, only once forgets who he is altogether. It's easier for Bucky to lose himself, and there are times when Steve can tell he didn't wake up as himself. There are times when Steve wakes with the lingering impression of cold hands on his throat and the uncertainty of whether it was just a dream or an unconscious reflex by the sleeping figure beside him.

But Steve stays, because that's the horrible blessing of having Steve Rogers as a (lover?) friend. He'll lay next to you when you can hardly breathe, let alone talk, and he'll wash off the blood from the places where you scratched through layers of skin. He'll hold you even as you curse him over and over, threaten to kill him in a million and one ways. Steve is a bright point in an otherwise endless expanse of darkness, and Bucky can't help but gravitate toward him, start to orbit him as a mass disguised as the rest of space.

"I still think you're the most handsome man I've met," says Steve, and damn him because he means it. His raw honesty makes Bucky want to cry, want to punch the goodness out of him, want to break lying teeth and a traitorous jaw, want to bruise his evenly-glowing golden skin and destroy the stars powering it.

Because, in the end, Bucky is still Project Star-Eater. Bucky is still a weapon carefully constructed to build on what Steve is, to be better than him, to effortlessly take him down. Sometimes, in the dark spaces between periods of sleep where he's left with his thoughts and the steady rise and fall of Steve's chest, Bucky wonders if they're only an even match because he can't bring himself to end it. He can't snuff out the brightest thing in the world because it's the brightest thing in his own world.

Steve's been living in and out of the run-down apartment for a week and a half when they first have company. As out of place as Steve looked, with his clean, colorful clothing and literally glowing smile, he blends into the background in comparison to the man who walks in there like he owns the place, probably because he does. Steve's presence may fill rooms, but the man strutting up the stairs brings a party wherever he goes, like an umbrella keeping off the perpetual storm over his head. Even dressed in a long-sleeved v-neck, a heavy but just-out-of-stylish winter coat, and precisely torn-up jeans, his smile's worth more than most occupants of the apartment will see in a decade.

Tony Stark saunters up to the door numbered 337 and knocks twice.

Bucky wakes from a light nap and raises his head to listen, eyes closed and head cocked. There's a third knock at the door, sharp and impatient. His blood pressure rises to a rush in his head. Hardly able to breathe, he shakes the softly glowing man beside him awake, and in his anxiety it's a bit more rough than he intended. Steve wakes in time to the fourth and fifth knocks on the door, delivered in rapid succession. "There's someone at the door," Bucky whispers into Steve's better ear. "They've knocked five times." He's practically breathing through grit teeth.

Steve sits up, puts his hand on the other's shoulder. He moves it up to stroke the uneven surface of Bucky's cheek. His hands are warm on the always-irritated sore spot where They'd stuck a graft on his face. Or had it grown there by itself? Some of the patches spread after they were grafted, making irregular rashes of darkness on his skin. "Relax," says Steve. "I'm sure it's some sort of mistake."

There's a sixth knock at the door. Bucky's spine is taut as a heavy wire cord about to snap. "They seem pretty certain," he says, but Steve just kisses his forehead and stands. He stretches, puts on pants, and throws a jacket over his bare chest, hood over his face.

He answers the door to find none other than—the closest word here is coworker, but there's something more personal about their relationship, but it isn't personal enough to count as the camaraderie of brothers-in-arms. So, to Steve, the man at the door is just Stark, Mr. Stark if he's trying to be polite. Tony stands a good half foot, maybe more, shorter than Steve, but his personality is ten feet tall and precedes him. It's currently trying to push its way into the apartment, but Steve is a brick wall in the middle of the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Steve asks in a frustrated whisper.

"A guy can't check up on his super-friends?" Tony asks. "I'm hurt, Cap."

Steve gives him a death glare and Stark fights it off with his sarcastic defiance. "How did you know I was here?"

"You're not exactly inconspicuous, you know. I just asked around until I found someone who saw a guy built like a glow-in-the-dark brick shithouse, and—"

"Leave."

Tony folds his arms and digs his heels in for a fight. "No."

For the first time, Steve notices the lack of a faint glow on Stark's skin, the missing light under his shirt. He frowns. "Finally got sick of being one of us?"

"Nah, I just moved on from that part of my life. If you couldn't tell, us normies still age at a measurable pace." He shrugs. "It's cute that you're trying to protect your boyfriend, but stop changing the subject already. Just be glad I made it here before SHIELD."

"Boyfriend?" Steve sputters.

"You think my dad didn't tell me about you two? I think he had the hots for you."

"So did everyone."

Stark ignores him. "But he never stopped going on about you and—" He doesn't know what to call the man hiding in the vast dark somewhere behind Steve. "—you and Barnes. Never left each others' sides. Maybe it was different then, but it makes you think, nowadays."

"He's not—"

"You do know that it's okay to be queer in public now, right?" Steve winces at the slur. How many times had he heard it hurled at him like stones and hail on the endless walk between school and home, or whatever constituted home then? "Like, everyone knows about me and Pep and Rhodey. It's no big deal."

"Everyone knows practically everything about you," Steve remarks. "Besides, Bucky and— I don't want to push him into anything he might not— I don't want to assume he— I don’t want to take advantage of what he doesn’t remember."

"Aha!" Tony clasps his hands in front of him. "So you were sweethearts!"

"Yes, we had lockets with pictures of each other and everything." Steve rolls his eyes. "Why are you here?"

"Is it bad for a guy to want to visit his co-worker and said co-worker's significant other, not otherwise specified?" Tony tries to push past Steve, but he doesn't budge.

"He doesn't want company," he says, dry and half-threatening, "and I fully intend to respect his wishes."

"Well, it's not going to help him to stay in here alone with just his life-sized Captain America teddy bear."

"He makes the decisions about his environment."

"Not interested in moving into your room in the Tower? When I first heard that you were sneaking around to see him, I upgraded the bed on your floor to a king-sized one."

"And I thought you didn't take after your father." Steve shakes his head. "He won't even move into my apartment."

Tony wrinkles his nose. "That closet space of an apartment you call your home address?"

"Not all of us are used to living in squalor, Stark."

"Jesus, you don't have to be so rude about it."

"I'm not the one snooping around and following someone you claim to respect."

Tony sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose, puts a hand on his hip, looks to the side, and sighs again. He takes off his big round sunglasses and folds them, putting them in the breast pocket of his jacket. "If I can find you, so can Fury."

Steve freezes like a cat under the hungry gaze of the canary. "Do you think he's—?"

"Not yet," says Tony, "but he'll figure it out soon. I can throw him off your scent, but it isn't going to last long."

"Shit," says Steve. "Shit," he says again, for emphasis, knocking his forehead against the side of the doorframe. There's a rustle, a movement in the darkness. He can't hear it, but Tony can.

Stark shrugs. "He's a liability. People aren't going to forget that SHIELD was HYDRA until the Winter Soldier's off the streets and—"

"Did I give you permission to call me that?" asks a voice, ice-sharp, from the darkness beyond the door. Bucky appears all at once, like he's materializing under Steve's glow. He makes for an intimidating picture, half-unshaven, with his scars out in the open and no mask to cover the patches of the void on his cheeks, chin, and neck. It's hard to tell if the uneven darknesses under his eyes are more unnatural rubbery silk skin or regular sleepless shadows.

"Bucky!" Steve turns around. "You should be laying down—"

"Barnes!" Tony says, almost simultaneously. "Just the man I wanted to see!"

Bucky tilts his head a little, watching Tony with unreadable empty eyes. "Do they know about this location?"

"I don't know yet. But they'll find it quickly enough when they figure out that you and Steve have been canoodling—"

Somehow, he manages to pull off a very threatening clearing of his throat. "How long do we have?"

"A week, tops?" Tony hypothesizes. "I can probably buy you another one on top of that, but that's all."

Steve recovers, wrapping an arm around Bucky's waist. "It's going to be okay. We'll figure out what to do." He looks at Tony out of the corner of his eyes. "Won't we?"

"I know where they're not gonna look," Tony says, "but you're not going to like it."

Chapter Text

"No! No, no, no, no, no." Bucky hasn't stopped repeating the word since Stark left. He's up and pacing, pacing, pacing around the room. It's the most active Steve's seen him since everything... collapsed. On one hand, it's good that he has the energy to move more than just between the bed and the kitchen corner. On the other, it's worrying that he's so agitated. Steve knows how Bucky gets when he's agitated, and the idea that all the shit that happened over seventy years may have worsened his reaction to stress makes Steve want to up and leave. But he won't. He's been through much, much worse with Bucky. He'd follow him into hell; he'd go alone if it meant coming back out with Bucky. Stark was right about the whole partnership thing. It's just so fragile, so nebulous, that Steve doesn't want to shatter it with the wrong words.

Steve stands up from the bed, follows Bucky around the circle he's wearing in the linoleum. "I'm not happy about it either," he says, "but it's this or the cells."

"No!" Bucky shouts, spinning around, hands rising to fight on instinct. "No! No, no, no." He points at Steve, glaring at him with death in his eyes. It's not serious, not this time, but that is only a small blessing. But he's mad and frustrated, to the point where he hardly has words anymore.

"What else can we do?" Steve reaches out and takes Bucky's wrist. He strokes the rough calluses of flesh and space. For his part, Bucky doesn't say a word, but his shoulders slump. He walks forward and rests his head on Steve's chest, eyes closed. His hand takes Steve's. "I know, I know. I don't trust him either." He takes a deep breath. "But I trust him more than SHIELD. Director Fury's got a good heart, but he's under a lot of pressure right now, and he doesn't always think with his heart." Steve smiles, reaches down to cup Bucky's chin and lift it up. "But you know what's funny?"

"No."

"He thinks you're more dangerous than nuking New York."

Hours later, Steve is wearing the most ridiculous thing he's ever seen. It's an ugly drab modernist shade of yellow-grey, stitched into a rough shawl shape and wrapped around his shoulders. Stark said it would throw them off his trail. He holds a matching length of stiff plastic fabric in his other hand for Bucky to don.

Bucky doesn't have anything to pack, not since Steve's started "collecting" his journals full of multilingual scrawls. He can hardly read it once it's on paper, how the hell does Steve expect to understand anything in it? Steve, who speaks all of three languages—English, of course, and then four half-languages. It's a ridiculous idea.

Steve wraps the stiff fabric around Bucky's shoulders, securing it at his collarbone. Bucky can't help but scratch at the place where it meets skin. He's in a white medical mask and dark glasses—and the rest of him looks sick enough to go unnoticed. Steve's in sunglasses, too, and a low hoodie, and a little powder foundation to cover the galaxy over his cheeks. They're not entirely unrecognizable, but they won’t be recognized at a glance—that's about the best they can hope for. Bucky flexes his hands in the tight material of his gloves. The vibranium shows through the sheer latex medical gloves.

The story is that "Dennis Carroll" is the assistant of "Benjamin Ford," who's a celebrity (hence the stretch limousine and ritzy room) hiding his identity (the fake names, the glasses) while recovering from a bad bout of whatever's going around (the mask). That should keep SHIELD off their case, at least for a little while.

Bucky takes most of Steve's bags, loading them on his arms and back. When the limousine, dark as the night around them, pulls up to the curb, he silently refuses to let the chauffeur take the bags. "He wants to keep everything safe," Steve says in a conspiratorial whisper, winking behind his sunglasses. "We're keeping a low profile."

"Understandable, sir." The chauffeur winks back and allows Bucky into the low-ceilinged car, Steve climbing in after him.

Bucky is a bundle of shivering metal rods, bound in the center so tightly that they might snap in half. Steve puts a hand on his shoulder and keeps it there as the car starts and rolls onto the main streets.

It's almost three in the morning when they arrive at the hotel, and Steve checks them in while Bucky waits in the car. Stark arranged everything so they wouldn't be noticed or bothered. The limo would pull around to a back garage and they'd take the utility elevator to one of the highest floors.

Bucky's gone white behind the mask and glasses that cover most of his face. He looks younger and more scared than Steve's seen him since rescuing him the first time. The utility elevator moves slowly, grinding against the walls. His teeth clench, gritting in tune. He shuffles closer to Steve's side for security.

Steve dials Stark to confirm that they've checked in alright, that they're on their way up to the hotel room. "And these... things regulate our heat signatures on cameras?"

"Yeah," says Stark around a yawn. "Yeah, that's what they do. They block your signals and give off their own. Or was that the prototype?"

"I don't know. We've got the... interestingly colored ones."

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. You're safe, don't worry. Tell Barnes even though I know he can hear me." Steve relays the message. "Anyway, the jet'll be in in a couple of days. It would be here sooner, but I had to call for it behind SHIELD's backs. Kind of sucks when your living space is fifty levels over top-secret government operations."

Steve says something, unsympathetic, and Bucky snorts. The elevator finally grinds to a halt and steadies itself. Steve leads the way into the hallway and Bucky follows, keeping track of every door, every window, every possible exit as he drags five bags alongside him. He waits as Steve hangs up and fumbles for his keycard, then fumbles trying to make it work. The light on the door finally turns green and the lock unclicks. Steve holds it open for Bucky.

Something is... off. He says nothing as he deposits the bags in the closet off the hallway into their suite. The gloves and glasses go with them. The mask goes in the trash. Steve's pocketing his own sunglasses when he catches up to Bucky and notices how tight his angles are.

"We're here," he says, "we're fine."

Bucky says nothing and they walk into the main part of the hotel room, where the hall from the door funnels out into a large space with two huge beds in one corner and what looks like a full living room set in another. The walls are creamy off-white, with matching curtains leading to another room. The furniture all has matching silk dust ruffles around the edges, and sumptuous fat pillows and cushions with gold rope edgings. The coffee table is an immaculate slice of either petrified wood or a huge geode. The TV is mounted on the wall, with a glass and granite table underneath it displaying five remotes and at least three boxes Steve doesn't recognize. The carpet is a deep shade of dark wine red. It's the exact image of luxury.

Except for about fifteen agents decked out in SHIELD gear, equipped with several shock guns (at least, that's what Steve hopes they are), all aimed at the two of them in the mouth of the hallway. They instinctively fall into fighting stances, pressed back to back, scoping out either half of the room. In the middle of the room stands Director Fury, hands behind his back, watching Steve and Bucky (and mostly Bucky) carefully.

"Come on," Steve whines. "Can't one thing go right?"

Fury opens his mouth to speak, but Steve's already headed for two of the agents. He dodges the electric blasts from their shock guns and lunges at them, tripping one and tackling the other. On the opposite side of the room, Bucky's sweeping feet out from beneath some of the agents, tapping the others on the backs of their necks and making them drop like flies with a short shock from his arm. That's still less than half of them.

Steve rolls under another blast that marks the walls black and ends up behind the instigating agent. They try to smack him in the side of the head with the butt of their shock gun, but Steve ducks and uses their momentum to spin them over and flip them to the ground. Bucky's disabling shock guns one at a time, with localized blasts to the triggers that gum them and prevent them from moving. His face is hard, almost unrecognizable, and there's a spark of joy in his black eyes.

Then, a high-ranking agent (judging by the outfit) neither Steve nor Bucky knows steps into the fray and barks something in Russian that makes Bucky freeze. He follows it with something that sounds like a poem, and Bucky goes blank, feet drawn together and hands at his sides. One more command and Bucky walks toward him like a wind-up tin soldier.

"Bucky!" Steve says, glancing away for too long. Someone manages to land a jab in his side. He twists back to push them to the floor. By the time he's clear, Bucky is in manacles that vibrate and crackle with energy. His right hand is pulled to his left side with his immobile, limp arm. His eyes are those of dolls, shiny and shallow. He looks almost dead. "The hell are you doing?"

"Detaining a threat, Captain Rogers," Fury says, unmoving. The agents around them have stopped actively fighting Steve, but each has their sights on him.

"Bucky's not a threat."

"No," he concedes, "but the Winter Soldier is."

Steve looks at the empty shell that's his—his best friend, his partner in crime, his hero. "He isn't the Winter Soldier."

"Not consciously." Fury gestures to a few of the crumpled bodies on the floor. They're immobile, bloodied, broken. Dead. "He fights to kill."

"You attacked him."

"But what if we waited and he went off anyway? This is for your own safety, Rogers."

"My safety?" he asks incredulously. "Listen, he couldn't kill me if he tried—"

"You wouldn't be alive if someone hadn't intervened—"

"He intervened! He saved my life."

"This isn't up for debate." The agent whose hand is around Bucky's wrist, hard and crushing, presses a button on the outside of the manacle attached to his left arm. Bucky spasms and shakes, falling to his knees, face still blank. He's looking through the ceiling like he's praying or dead.

Steve's lips tighten and he has to physically restrain himself from cursing out Fury right then and there. Stark said something about there being a "chance" of detection. He recommended following SHIELD's orders if that happened, because the consequences would be much worse if he didn't. Steve's blood is cold in his veins and he wants to punch the superiority off that agent's face, standing there with an arm on Bucky's shoulder like he's showing off a dog.

Bucky's no animal, but they're caging him like one.

"Fine," Steve relents. He glances around the room. There aren't any exits aside from the door. The agents were already there, long before they checked in. If Stark sold them out, Steve's prepared to take down the tower to get Bucky out. But if he didn't... "One condition."

"What's that?"

"I'm coming with him."

Chapter Text

Turns out they don't have accommodations suited for Captain America on the detainment floor, but on the other hand, his personal floor is fully-furnished and stocked with anything he could possibly need. JARVIS even sets up a live feed from Bucky's cell.
Steve can't sleep.

He figures that he might as well have an excuse to not sleep, so Steve takes the elevator to the level with the communal kitchen, dining room, and TV/game room. He doesn't need a whole floor to himself. It's too much space, too empty, too many places where ghosts and shades can echo in his eyes. Maybe there's someone in the kitchen. Bruce's been here since Tony fixed the place, and Clint moved in a couple of months ago, which means that Tasha drops in sometimes. For such an intensely alienating person, Tony does enjoy surrounding himself with people. Howard was much the same way.

The lights are on already and Steve lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He walks through the empty room with its blank screens and toward the kitchen, where light pours from the bottom of the door. Just before he turns the handle, he catches voices on the other side. He can't quite recognize them. They're muffled, but one of them—the one that's doing most of the talking—is almost yelling. Steve thinks it might be Tony. He slips into the room, unnoticed by its occupants.

Stark sits on one of the counters, barefoot, in sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt, both black, that shows the edges of the irregular tan patches on his chest. His hands are clenched around a half-empty coffee cup and his legs are swinging violently. Across from him, sitting at a chair with its back to the table, is Director Fury, in casual wear—the first time Steve's ever seen him in civvies. It's just a sweatshirt, jeans, and white slippers (bunny slippers), but it's so far removed from the image Steve has of Fury that it's almost comical.
Neither of them notice him.

"—honeymoon I planned, but you trashed the hotel room, too! Do you know who has to pay for that damage? Do you even know? It's me. Me." Tony gestures to himself. "And that's not a problem, usually, but I've had to cover your ass, like, twice a week since you've moved in here. Fuck's sake, I haven't even tested the detainment levels and now you're using them."

"I think our occupant isn't going to be putting much stress on them," Fury muses.

"That's beside the point! I mean— okay, I got the bill, right, and someone burned a hole in one of the bed skirts. One of the Dupioni silk bed skirts. Talk about a pain in the ass to replace!"

"At least nobody broke the solid crystal bathroom set."

"At least." Tony rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his coffee. "They— aka we— have to recarpet the entire room because it was burned in several spots! And there was blood on it! The blood wouldn't have been a problem if there weren't also burn holes!" The carpet was a thick, luxurious dark wine color; Steve hadn't noticed that there was blood until Fury pointed it out. He watches Tony in awe. "You can't just do that! You can't just— go around my back and look at what I've been buying lately!"

"It was a matter of national security, Mr. Stark—"

"Like hell it was! One of my friends and his partner going on an island honeymoon is not an issue of national security."

"You forgot the part where that 'partner' is a wanted war criminal with over a hundred counts of murder on his head." Fury turns around to pick up the large white mug on the table and spots Steve. He takes a sip of his drink and stands up, stretching. "It's almost two in the morning. We can continue this tomorrow." Fury starts toward the door.

"Like hell we can!" Tony calls after him.

"Captain Rogers," he says with a nod as he passes Steve.

"Director Fury." Steve nods back, barely keeping his cool.

Fury leaves the room and shuffles toward the elevator.

The kitchen is still, and Tony stares at the door, gaping, holding out his coffee cup like he's pointing it at an invisible criminal. Finally, he notices Steve, and slides off the counter with a sigh.

"Can't sleep either?" Steve asks, approaching the cabinets. He looks through them—how many dinner sets does one guy need?—and finally pulls out a large mug, the kind you use for café au lait.

"I don't sleep." He holds out a hand. "Let me get that for you. I don't want you breaking my coffee machine."

Steve hands him the mug. "Asshole." He takes the seat Fury vacated. "What was that all about?"

"You couldn't tell?" Tony asks from the contraption set up at the juncture of two counters in the corner. He fiddles with knobs and switches.

"Couldn't really hear what you were saying." Steve points to his better ear.

"Right, sorry."

"If you could turn around while you're talking to me, that would be great."

Tony obliges, leaning back against the counters and folding his arms across his chest. He's been doing that more lately, ever since he took out the arc reactor. "I was politely reminding him about how he fucked up my friends' romantic getaway honeymoon by burning holes in the hotel carpet."

Steve rolls his eyes. "Were your 'friends' even married?"

"No." Tony grins. "Might as well be, though. They're an older couple. Known each other for years."

"I can only imagine."

The machine dings and Tony turns back around, pulling out two cups of steaming liquid. "How do you take your coffee?" he asks over his shoulder.

"Three sugar, three creamer, and vanilla syrup if you have any."

"Aren't you the kind of guy who's supposed to take his coffee black?"

Steve grins. "Didn't they tell you that the serum doesn't reinforce your tastebuds? I can't stand that shit."

"It'll be our little secret." Tony puts both cups on the table, the lighter one near Steve. He takes a seat. Steve turns his chair around to face him.

"So it wasn't you?"

"Oh, ye of little faith." Tony shakes his head. "Nah. Fury got into my personal financial records—"

"How? I thought JARVIS would prevent that somehow."

Tony's face flushes red. "He got on my laptop when I got up to use the bathroom."

Steve smacks his hand against his forehead, grimacing. "Stark," he groans.

"Has anyone ever told you that you'd make a wonderful Captain Picard?" Tony takes a sip of his coffee. "Because you would. You've got that 'world-weary but still foolishly trusting' look to you. And you do the thing with your face." He mimics Steve's expression.

"Star Trek, Next Generation," he recounts dryly, "I actually watched that one."

"I grew up with it." Tony shrugs. "I can't help but be a little partial."

"And I figured you liked it because you were on it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Isn't it obvious? You played Wesley Crusher."

"You come into my house, insult me personally," Tony says. "I am offended. You've lost your right to live under my roof."

He smiles. "But we have a deal. That means you'll have to let Bucky out." Steve takes a sip of his coffee and almost spits it out. It's acrid, even under the clothing sweetness of the creamer and vanilla. He coughs. "What the hell did you put in this stuff?"

"Coffee, sugar, creamer, syrup?" Stark recounts.

"This is worse than the stuff at basic. Who taught you how to make coffee?"

"I did."

Steve stands up and dumps his cup in the sink. He approaches the coffee machine and assesses it. A flip of a switch later and he pulls out the soggy filter and grounds. It smells awful. "When was the last time you put new coffee in this thing?" he asks, pinching his nose on his way to dump it in the garbage.

"Dunno. This morning?"

Steve looks at the ceiling for release. "How does anyone live with you?"

“Rhodey usually makes the coffee.” Tony takes a sip of his and Steve notices that it's starless-night black. He cringes at the thought of what that might taste like. “He can do those little cream and foam drawings! I have no idea where he learned that.” Beat. “I have no idea where he learned a lot of things.” Steve can practically hear the “wink wink, nudge nudge” in his voice.

The coffee contraption isn't half as convoluted as it looks, and Steve has a cup of real, decently-made coffee in less than a minute. There are little packets of sugar and cups of creamer, just like at a restaurant, neatly organized in the wire basket next to the machine. It's bizarre. Steve uses four of the sugar packets (because they're smaller than the spoonfuls he uses) and three of the creamer cups, sliding them into the black hole in the middle of the counter space. He grabs a tiny little spoon, just the right size for stirring coffee, and brings it with him to the table.

“You want this place to feel like an actual home, right?” Steve asks, stirring his coffee in long, slow circles.

“That's kind of the idea, thanks for noticing.” Tony stands up to make another cup of coffee. “Anyway, you don't have to change the filter every time. It still brews a whole pot of coffee.”

“The point isn't your fancy coffee machine,” Steve says. “It's that you've got condiments like we're in a restaurant.”

The coffee machine purrs as it pours Tony's coffee. He turns around, leaning back against the counter, arms folded low on his chest. “Are you saying that I'm too fancy?”

“No, just too... formal.”

Tony picks up one of the cups of creamer and eyes it. “I thought they were elegant,” he says, peeling back the top and taking it like a shot.

“Remind me to never ask for your opinion on anything ever again.” Steve takes a sip of his coffee. Way better than whatever the hell Stark made him before. For his part, Stark grabs his cup and takes a long drink before even letting it cool. Steve stares. He looks between Tony's chest and mug, back and forth, feeling like there was some sort of connection but being too tired to figure it out. “Oh,” he says. “You miss it.”

“Can't a guy like to scald his tongue without getting a psychoanalysis?” Tony sits at the table again, coffee cup in front of him. He stares into it, and in the light, Steve can see the dark circles under his eyes.

“Aren't you cold?” Steve asks. “Going around in just an undershirt?”

“Nah. It was never like that for me. JARVIS, what's Steve's body temperature?”

“56.67 degrees centigrade, at rest,” the AI answers automatically, “or 125 degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Pull up a chart.” A chart appears on the table and Steve pulls back from it, not willing to break the built-in screen. “Okay. Show me Cap's infrared view”—an outline of his body comes up, bright red, orange, and yellow—“mine”—an outline of Stark, filled with blues, greens, and yellows—“and mine circa six months ago"—an identical outline, almost entirely green and yellow, but with an orange circle around his chest like a target with a smaller circle of red in its center. “I only ran a little feverish.”

Steve blinks at the charts, examining them. The red circle is exactly the size of the arc reactor. The orange covers all the places where Stark has permanent patches of half-burnt skin. “Must've been cold at first,” he observes before taking a sip of his coffee to get out of having to say anything more.

“I was in bed for, like, two weeks, while it cleared my system. You can ask Pep.” Tony looks at the diagrams again before a flash of disgust overcomes his face and he swipes them away. The screen on the table goes dark, making it look like a regular table again. “Two weeks after recovering from the surgery.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes more, each staring into their own cups of coffee. Steve doesn't know what to say. Is he supposed to sympathize? Say Tony's brave? Ask how it feels to live without sparks in your veins, the constant rush of heat in every part of your body? The heat's still uncomfortable, but New York is as cold as he remembered. At least he doesn't need a coat to go out in the winter.

“Well, that was fun,” Tony says, standing abruptly. He leaves his coffee, still steaming and half drunk, on the counter. “We really should compare notes again. Sleep well, Cap.” And with that, Stark turns around and walks out the doors.

Steve sits in silence for a while; it feels like half an hour, but it could be longer. He turns down JARVIS' query—in the form of words written across the table screen—to get the live view of the cells in here. When he returns to his room, it's almost five in the morning.
Against his better judgment, he checks the feed projected on his wall. It's dark in the detainment cell, but a glow emanates from the occupant in the corner, and Steve would recognize that sitting silhouette anywhere. Bucky's legs are crossed in front of him, and he's slumped toward the wall. His elbows sit on his knees and his chin touches his sternum. To the untrained eye, it would look like he's meditating. But Steve knows that posture, that air. Bucky's shutting down.

Chapter Text

The walls are closing in on him with the ringing sound of the cryo chamber. Bucky can feel the leers on his back like laser sights. His heart pounds in his throat and coldness crawls under his eyelids, between the plates of metal from his shoulder to his fingers. It hardens, freezing, locking him into place. He can feel the darkness pulse around him.

Bucky sways between conscious and unconscious, time passing like a jumpy, undercranked film camera. Even when he's awake, he isn't in his body; he's sitting three inches to the left of it, and it moves with him like the world's most awkward marionette. He's a ghost possessing his own corpse, partially inside of it and in control of it, but not really belonging there. When he isn't in his body, he doesn't feel the cold as badly.

The disorientation gives way to awareness and confusion as the hours crawl past. He wakes up in stages, feeling sleep paralysis free his joints one at a time. Time is meaningless; he remembers going with Steve to the hotel, having a bad feeling—and then what? Bucky thinks he remembers bones breaking and blood, but those are in so many of his memories that they might be bleeding through. His head feels stuffed and cottony, even in the places where They didn't rip out his thoughts and feelings and identity and filled the hole with void. The cold fog dissipates and the lines of the room appear.

Metal walls, thick fabric pads covering every inch of the floor. There's a toilet, shower, and sink in one of the corners, a rail with a curtain hanging around it. A camera watches him from the wall, following his movements with quiet clicks. The door is hardly more than a door-shaped line carved into the wall. A detention cell. What a thought. At least it isn't a familiar HYDRA complex—the structure is different, the cell is more open, and there's even a bed with a mountainous quilt against the wall.

Bucky goes through the warm up procedures on his hand and arm, stretching to check every plate and component. Nothing's out of place. He flutters his left hand in faint anxiety. How did they get him here? He doesn't feel any injuries or bruises. He's even in a lightweight mint uniform that resembles scrubs. Did he give up willingly? Why can't he remember what happened? And of course, the one question that echoes in his mind more than all the others—where's Steve?

He takes a deep breath, a loud chill filling his throat and ears and head, his chest balloon-light and full of helium. It makes him cough and cough and cough, slumping against the wall for support. There's an ice-cold, tight steel band around his ribs and it squeezes like a hand trying to break off his airflow. Bucky's mind flashes through vague memories, too real to be fake but too distant to be his own, of his face breaking through ice and pressing, being pressed, against the smooth bottom of a container full of water. There's a phantom hand gripping the back of his head, pulling on his hair to steer him.

Bucky coughs again, hard enough that he almost vomits. The aching hole inside of him, that powers his unwilling body, burns like dry ice.

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Barnes?"

He startles violently, on his feet in seconds, clutching a knife that isn't there. There's nobody else in the cavernous cell. His eyes narrow and his chest rattles.

"My apologies," says the voice. A smooth, bare panel on the wall behind his bed lights up. Bucky approaches it slowly, shifting his feet across the floor but keeping his weight mostly centered. The varnished flooring burns his bare soles. "I am JARVIS, the artificial intelligence in charge of Avengers Tower." The screen displays a tall structure made of metal and glass. He's seen it before. Who hasn't? It's a prominent difference in the shape of the city; Bucky can't help but look at it when it's in his peripheral vision. JARVIS repeats the request: "would you like a glass of water?"

Bucky shakes his head "no" and stares at the screen until it goes dark again. He ends up laying on the cot, curled up, heavy blanket folded over him. It's not just warm, it's weighted, and the gentle pressure is so soothing. It reminds him that he's here, he's alive, he's awake. Not as warm as Steve (who probably requested the weighted blanket), but it'll have to do. Bucky falls asleep and doesn't dream.

Steve visits for as long as the security guards will let him. The halls are empty on the basement detainment level, just the guards stationed at each entrance and Steve sitting against a door. The same door, always, cold and white and impersonal and unremarkable. It doesn't even have a number. But it's Bucky's door nonetheless, and that's what makes the difference to Steve.

His eyes stay on the screen mounted on the wall, watching the interior of the cell in real time. Very little happens. Bucky was swaying and half-unconscious for the first day and a half, and now he's just sleeping or pretending to sleep buried under a heavy blanket. He turns down JARVIS' offers of food and water. Being what he is, he can probably keep that up for another week, maybe longer. But it still worries Steve.

Bucky has gone back to being completely silent, not even murmuring or screaming in his sleep. He's not even signing at the camera when Steve's around. Sure, sometimes he doesn't talk, but he'll almost always communicate with Steve in some way—letters or sign language or quiet shoulder taps. Now he's just unresponsive. The only sign he's even alive is the graph in the corner of the feed, monitoring his temperature, breathing, pulse, and brainwave activity.

Steve's nails are gnawed down to the quick and he's losing more sleep than he's getting, waking shaken from the same dreams about snow and snipers and sudden deaths. When he closes his eyes, he can still see the glazed blank stare on Bucky's face back in the hotel room. He's not eating much, either, and it's just a damn good thing that his body can run on self-generated star power alone. Steve purposely avoids everyone else in the tower, watching the ground and leaving his implant in his room so he doesn't have to talk to anyone. What would he even say? "I'm sorry I'm a wreck, but the love of my life is broken and I don't know how to fix him this time."

It's still a bittersweet sensation to think of Bucky in those terms—even dancing around the truth with words like "partner" or "significant other." They're both too damn old to play this game anymore. From what Steve can understand of the journals, Bucky feels the same way, always has. Of course he always has—Steve always has. Which of the Starks was it who said something about Steve only having eyes for his "best friend"? It used to be that Steve would avoid those words, avoid thinking about that aspect of their relationship, because maybe it wouldn't exist if he didn't let it. There was that time he was so sick he almost died, the kiss they'd shared in the only bed they had. There were those times at night where Bucky couldn't sleep and had nothing to do with his hands but trace patterns over Steve's skin. There was the endlessly fascinated way he looked at Steve, even when they were kids. They might've kissed a couple more times, too; but they didn't mean anything if Steve never thought of them.

It was survival, it was fear. But there's still the cold snake in the back of Steve's throat that hisses when he thinks about losing Bucky, having lost Bucky, never allowing the kisses to mean something between them. He watches the feed with distant eyes and decides to say something, anything, about it when Bucky comes back from this.

If Bucky comes back from this.

It's frustrating to watch him passively refuse food and water, and irritating every time Steve has to explain that it's technically okay, either of them could go for god knows how long without sustenance or sleep if they had to. Sure, it's not good for them. It makes you the kind of sick where you can hardly move for a week. And skipping sleep for too long makes your brain play like a cracked vinyl record. But Bucky won't die if he doesn't eat for a week or two or three. Steve's already worried enough without having to reassure Stark—and Stark's partners—that Bucky's still alive. But he's getting more worried by the day, almost by the hour, and he's stopped being able to say anything through the door because he just chokes on it.

Two weeks of sleeplessness on Steve's part, and either half-consciousness or coma on Bucky's, and SHIELD finally lets him in. The guard who gives Steve the tray of various foods, from the simple to the gourmet, eyes him warily and says nothing as he opens the door. Steve's throat is too thick to say anything and before he knows it, he's inside the mostly-dark room with the door locked once again. His hands shake, making the silverware on the tray clatter. His legs fight him the whole way, but Steve makes it to Bucky's corner and puts the food down before sitting himself.

He doesn't know what to say for a long time, so he sits in silence by the edge of the cot and the unmoving cold shape under the blankets. Steve takes a deep breath, for composure, and reaches out so his hand is hovering a couple inches over what appears to be Bucky's shoulder. "Hey," he says, voice cracking. "Buck. I-I'm here. I've got food." He receives no response, not even when he tries shaking the shoulder under his hand. Steve looks at the tray, looking at everything crammed together on it. His eyes fall on a chocolate bar, some brand he doesn't know with a fancy Swedish name and fancier wrapper, and he takes it.

Steve moves so he's no longer sitting, but standing on his knees and leaning over the cot. He peels back the piles of blankets stacked over the weighted one, folding them back over the edge of the cot. Bucky's outline becomes clearer and clearer until he's there at last, laying on his side on the cot, in rumpled scrubs, staring at the white wall with unmoving glowing eyes. If it weren't for the glow, for the rise and fall of his chest, for the quiet vibrations under the plates of his arm, Steve would think Bucky was dead.

"Wake up," Steve says, shaking Bucky's shoulder again. "Come on, you jerk, just wake up. I've got chocolate. Really fancy chocolate, the good stuff." If he doesn't acknowledge the tears, then they aren't real. He carefully rolls Bucky onto his back, so that vast void gaze is fixed on the ceiling. Steve's hand rests over his heartbeat. "C'mon. Just look at me." His empty hand trails up until he's stroking Bucky's cheek, and everything feels barren and cliche and permanently broken. "You asshole."

A kiss wouldn't wake him up. A kiss would just make everything seem all the more dreamlike, and in the dark, with the gold glow from Steve's skin mixing with the violet-black from Bucky's, everything is already floating like a nightmare. How do you convince someone they're not asleep? Steve can't quite remember. So he does the first thing he can think of and slaps Bucky's cheek. It's not hard, not to hurt, and it probably won't leave a mark. But there's a sound, and then suddenly an ice-cold hand around Steve's wrist and a glaze of terror over those starless eyes.

Steve wants to sob. He wants to collapse onto Bucky's chest and cry and cry and cry. God only knows how many tears he's wasted on this asshole already, what difference would a few more make? But there are more important things at hand, like Bucky's moving skin and the chocolate bar melting in its plastic wrapping.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Bucky asks, voice slow and slurring, but Steve's heard the exact phrase from that mouth enough times to recognize the words. "I could've— I coulda— " His hand falls from Steve's wrist. "Could've broken your wrist there."

"I'm not that fragile, you know." Steve can almost feel the glow rolling off him like the tears on his cheeks. He wipes them away before Bucky notices. "You've been out for almost two weeks."

"I'm not that fragile either." Bucky smiles, or at least gives it a try. His face doesn't feel right. "What happened to me?"

"Someone shut you down with a— verbal prompt? And you've been... here ever since." Steve doesn't know how to describe it, aside from looking like the place between being fully asleep and experiencing sleep paralysis. The hollows under Bucky's eyes are darker, spreading like bruises, but his face is moving, alive, no longer waxy and stiffened.

"I've never been awake after one of those," he explains, trying to stretch and failing. His body isn't quite responding yet, and it just gives a weak shudder when he tries to move. "Jesus. Is that what fried my brain?"

"According to JARVIS." Steve pushes his hair back, an old nervous habit, and starts peeling open the wrapping on the chocolate bar. "I don't think being out for two goddamn weeks really helped you, though." He shoves the half-melted, half-unwrapped candy in Bucky's face. "Here. Eat it."

"No," Bucky whines, gaze fixed on the chocolate.

"Yes," Steve insists. "It's been more than seventy years since you last had chocolate. Come on, I hardly ever saw you eat your rations."

"'S not like there's a reason those keep going missing. Just never get around to having them." Bucky is many things, and one of those things is a good liar. But half-awake with his mind still somewhere else, floating against the ceiling and suffocating the space, his lies come out flat. “Bet they're good, though, everyone else likes them...”

“What, were you saving them for something?” Steve quirks an eyebrow.

Bucky sounds drunk when he says, “None of your business, you fucking... fancy coffee lover...”

Steve hums. “So that was you?” he asks softly, eyes tracing Bucky's scars. There are so many new places he has to learn on this familiar body.

“What's me?”

“The coffee. Every morning I'd get up and make coffee and find out that someone put chocolate in it for me.” He smiles.

“You don't look at things before you do them, Rogers. If you did, you'd know the chocolate was already there in the morning.”

Steve smirks. “Told you it was you.”

"Couldn't help it. You winced when you tried to drink that coffee." Bucky laughs, but between his dry throat and difficulty moving, it's more like a raspy cough. "You looked like a kicked puppy, you know that, Rogers?"

"At least it wasn't as bad as Stark's coffee." Maybe if he does well, SHIELD will eventually let Bucky move up to Steve's floor. Steve has a couple of spare bedrooms, but there's a very large bed in the main bedroom that looks to be the perfect size for the two of them. "I'll make you try it when you can come upstairs."

"They're letting me out?"

"Not yet." Steve pushes the melting chocolate a little closer. "You have to eat and recover, first."

"Fine, I'll take the fucking chocolate." Bucky snatches it out of Steve's hand. "Mind holding me up?"

"Never," says Steve, and he means it more than anything.

Chapter Text

It's like there's a brick wall between Steve and Bucky, and all he can do is shout at it and hope some of what he's saying gets through. His words, his reassurances, his physical comfort is all wasted on the unfocused gaze of dark eyes fixed on the ceiling. There are moments where Bucky hears, and listens, and talks, but they're bizarre in that he sounds like nothing happened. Like the past several decades were a bad dream and they're sharing a bed in France, “you know, just in case you somehow get sick again, because you would.”

Steve's at a complete loss as to what to do.

There are so many times he can't take it, when he can't bear to leave Bucky's side but so lost, so stuck and helpless that it isn't helping either of them. Time has lost its meaning. It seems like there's always someone in the communal kitchen, making coffee or tea or sandwiches. Hell, there was one time he went up and Clint was in there, making omelets like it was nothing. When Steve asked, Clint said it was 3:30 in the morning.

Everyone's used to his desperate, help-me-I've-lived-off-of-nothing-but-coffee-and-sorrow-for-like-two-weeks face by now. He doesn't have much to say to anyone, even when they're sitting across the table from him. At least they all know how he takes his coffee—the ridiculousness of Tony swatting him away from the coffee contraption to make runny coffee grounds with cream and sugar is a little beyond Steve's comprehension. At least Tony got rid of the sugar sachets and cups of creamer.

Nothing changes. Bucky doesn't give, and Steve's starting to lose time in the dark detainment cell in the basement. It's a slight improvement to Bucky trying to kill him, but it's far from ideal. Being conscious would be better than this, even if he didn't talk. Steve alternates between wanting to snap the neck of whoever thought it was a good idea to use one of those codewords in the first place and wanting to beat his head against the wall.

One night—or day, it doesn't really make a difference—Steve's trying to take polite sips of the coffee Tony made him without looking too put-out by the taste. Tony's leaning back in his chair, rocking it on its two back legs, his feet propped up on the table. He fiddles with something shiny and metallic, no larger than Steve's fist, that looks like a cross between a ring puzzle and a very small motor. Tony frequently talks at Steve, even when sound is fuzzy nonsense and lips are different languages, but tonight, he's silent. He's got enough to take care of without the sleepwalking assassin and ragged-run captain.

Stark suddenly swings his legs off the table and plants them on the floor, righting his chair, making Steve look up. He says something, but the only thing discernible is “Rogers, catch.” Then, the whatever the hell it is flies through the air at Steve, who only barely catches it. The gadget's surface is mostly smooth, solid, with several rounded tube shapes crossing over each other. Up close, it looks more like a mess of wires, or maybe even a metal heart, than anything else.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Steve asks, looking up and reaching behind his ear to turn his implant on.

“Figure it out for me.”

“Figure it out yourself,” he half-snaps, making to throw it back to Tony.

“Hold your horses, Cap.” Tony takes a long sip from his cold mug, like he's downing all the shitty coffee in one gulp. “What I like to do, when I have a problem, is talk it out with someone and see if they know what to do.”

Steve makes his best you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me face, undermined only by the bruises around his eyes and under his cheeks. “Wouldn't JARVIS be able to, y'know, actually listen to everything you're saying?” Tony enunciates clearly enough, and his face is expressive, but he uses words that Steve just doesn't know and can't puzzle out.

“Nah.” He leans back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “Sometimes it doesn't even matter if they're listening.”

“Then go ask Pepper.”

“She's out of town, starting...” Tony checks his wrist (as if he'd ever wear a wristwatch), at which point JARVIS automatically tells him the time. It's 4:45 AM. “...two hours ago.”

“Then go ask Rhodes.”

“Also out. On official War Machine business.” It's kind of a thing, among the residents of the upper half of the tower, that Tony only ever says War Machine and never Iron Patriot. It's a bizarre kind of inside joke, but at least it makes more sense than everyone trying to egg Clint when he's in the kitchen.

“Well, damn, guess I'm the only other person left in the entire tower.” Steve stands up and makes for the coffee machine, dumping the thin sludge Stark calls “coffee” into the industrial kitchen sink. Tony says something, but he doesn't bother to try and figure it out, let alone turn around to watch his lips. He is so far past the point of giving a damn about anyone other than Bucky. “Though I think Natasha would kill you if you stepped foot on her floor when she was asleep.”

Tony says something that sounds an awful lot like, “yeah, she's like that.”

Steve finishes assembling his coffee—real, decent, coffee—and takes it back to the table. It's still steaming hot, so he decides to let it sit. Sure, he could drink it straight out of the machine and not even burn his tongue, but he doesn't need to. When he thinks Steve isn't paying attention, Tony makes and drinks a cup of coffee without even coming back to the table, and then mumbles all of his words like his mouth's gone numb. Nobody comments on that.

“Couldn't you call Sam?” Steve asks, idly stirring his coffee. “Or even Coulson? Why don't you wake up and bother Fury with this, I'm sure he'd love to hear your latest and greatest idea.” Okay, maybe he's still a little bitter over the hotel situation, but he's too tired to think twice about what he's saying.

“I didn't say anything, you know.” There's a shadow over Stark's face, eyes cast down at his own chest, fingers knit together. “JARVIS can verify that. Someone checked my finances when I wasn't looking.”

Steve rolls his eyes and takes a long sip of coffee to avoid having to say anything. When he puts his mug back down, Tony's leaning forward on the table, eyes wide and intent, hair pushed off his face like some kind of hare-brained, electrified engineer. God, it's uncanny how much he resembles his father. “I don't really need help on that.” Tony gestures to the gadget. “I'm trying to offer my, um, expertise at interpersonal problems.”

“Do you think I'm coming to you for dating advice?” Steve's blown past irritated and he's thinking about taking it out in one of the (seven) gyms. But he doesn't move.

Tony shrugs and leans back in his chair again. “It's just an offer. Besides, sometimes you figure it out just by talking about it.” He pauses, pushes hair off his face. “Was that too blunt? I'm sorry, Pep told me to be more blunt when I'm not trying to get something out of someone.”

Steve glances around the otherwise empty kitchen, with its bright white lights and shiny tiled counters and stainless steel surfaces. He looks back at Tony. “Fine. You want the news? You got the news.” He launches into the story, picking off where the official reports and TV stations stopped. How everything was back to normal until he dug up an address. How the door was unlocked and Steve ended up living in a tiny dark apartment for two weeks. Just how badly everything went to shit in the hotel room.

“Wait, what happened?” Tony asks.

“I don't know. The guy behind Fury said something I didn't understand, and he just... stopped.” Bucky had looked like a robot. Face as blank as untouched snow as he walked to the agent's side, docile as a doll when he was cuffed in the manacles. “Like they took him out and just pulled on his strings. He didn't even respond to them.” He didn't even scream when the shock ran up his left arm, disabling it, pushing him to the floor. Steve had looked into his eyes and found nothing. No malice. No pain, or fear, or killing instinct.

Nothing.

Tony looks over Steve's head, and the feeling of being watched comes over him. He cranes his neck around to see none other than Natasha, standing in the doorway in a tank top and yoga pants, arms folded, her weight on her left leg, looking at him like she knows all of his secrets. Which, to be fair, isn't an uncommon look for her. “Sounds like a hard reset to me,” she says, in sign and then out loud.

“A what?” Steve asks. He's heard the term before, but he can't place it in his head.

Tony sighs and Steve looks back at him. In his periphery, he watches Natasha approach the coffee contraption and check the filter. She turns her head to tap her chin in thanks to Steve. His brain is unwilling to move his hands, so he just smiles and winks back.

“Anyway,” Tony says, bringing Steve's focus back to him. “A cold reboot is when you start a computer from scratch, you turn its power supply on and it undergoes a BIOS and/or UEFI check. No, you don't need to know what those are,” he adds before Steve can even ask. “It's also when you turn a computer off by disconnecting it from a power source, which includes pressing its power button. That interrupts every process currently running, without giving them time to save and shut down.”

Natasha arrives at the table with her mug (all-black, with her sign on one side and the words “World's Best QPP” in Comic Sans on the other). She bumps Tony's side so he moves his chair over, and she sits at the chair that was just pressed up against Tony's. “They can do that to us,” she says/signs. “It's a last-ditch effort, normally if an agent goes way off the mission or remembers enough to fight back against the other programming.”

“Because brains work like computers—” Tony begins to explain.

“I know how brains and computers work, thank you very much,” Steve interrupts. “So They shut you down before things get worse.”

Nat nods. She pauses to collect her thoughts. “And then They usually send you to re-education.” She shudders. Steve has never seen her look as scared as the expression that flashes across her face, and he's seen her in some really deep shit. “That's kind of like booting into Safe Mode. It's a pliable state where They can isolate the problem and correct it.” Her eyes go dark. “By whatever means necessary.”

“Safe Mode lets the system check for problems without loading anything but the core components—you can't do anything that's not necessary for the operating system to function,” Tony says. “It can also allow the system to make an effort at recovering any lost data.”

“Where does Bucky fall in all of this? He's awake but he's not—here, he's not really himself.”

“Or anything at all?” Nat asks.

Steve nods. “Sometimes he acts like it's still '43. But he mostly hasn't said anything.”

“He's in Safe Mode and you're trying to run a program from that,” Natasha explains. “Safe Mode's not meant for anything other than troubleshooting and safely doing a warm reboot. Especially not made for running for multiple weeks.”

“The system shuts down but doesn't lose the connection to its power source. Usually doesn't run the BIOS and/or UEFI either.” Tony yawns, rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. “And then it boots normally, probably stably.”

“So someone needs to reboot him?” Steve imagines that, imagines it going horribly wrong and Bucky going comatose limp on the cot and those starless eyes never seeing anything again. He has to hide his face behind a sip of coffee so he doesn't look as scared shitless as he feels.

“Yeah,” says Tony. “And I'd volunteer and everything, but I don't speak Russian, so.” He shrugs.

Steve looks pointedly at Natasha, who looks down into her coffee. Her fingers tap arhythmically against the sides of the mug. “Could you?” he asks more softly.

“Yes,” she says. Then, slowly, “I've never done it before. Not to him. That's just something you don't do to your mentor.” She laughs without humor. “But we have the codewords. If we can figure out which code's the right one to use, then rebooting him should be easy.”

“So go ask Fury,” says Stark.

“He wasn't the one who said anything. It was the guy behind him, some agent I don't know.” In retrospect, Steve's surprised that the agent watching over Fury's shoulder hadn't been Coulson or Hill.

“Well, hey, I'm kind of a cypher genius.”

“You're whatever kind of genius is necessary at any given moment,” Steve shoots back.

Tony makes a face. “Yeah, but I actually know what I'm doing here. It's not like I'll have to pull another all-nighter learning.”

“Do you think you can crack it in one night?” Natasha asks, one eyebrow raised.

Tony shrugs. “But I can damn well try.”

Chapter Text

The initial rush of optimism in Steve's chest when Tony talked about decrypting the files fades as soon as it's been a week and Stark hasn't had any luck.

“Master hacker, huh?” he asks the fifth time Tony shows up in the kitchen for coffee that night.

Stark glares back with tired eyes ringed with circles almost as dark as Steve's. Looking closely, there's the slightest glimmer in his eyes, where his pupils meet his irises, that looks like a bright white star. Steve feels something off, but Tony's pissed enough already. “They used different ciphers on each code. And didn't arrange them in matched pairs.” He turns on the coffee contraption and faces Steve again. “Apparently you have to decrypt all of them and pair the ones that had the same encryption method.”

Steve sips his cooling coffee, out of words to say. He's been running on fumes since—since everything fell apart. Since the world he had worked so hard to build for himself in the aftermath of his ruined past collapsed around him. At least he still has the Avengers, or most of them, and their significant others, and Sam. He has Bucky again, but Steve's—and Bucky's—

It's hard to think about Bucky because he occupies so many places in Steve's mind. He's the symbol of friendship, and loyalty, and pain, and anger, and anxiety, and other things that Steve refuses to think about. It's hard to think of Bucky as the half-conscious shell of a being dozens of floors beneath his feet. It's hard to separate his friend Bucky from his enemy the Soldier, but the two images haven't reconciled yet. Steve's mind is a patchwork of familiar skin and new-old scars.

A tap on his shoulder makes Steve break out of his thoughts and look around the surroundings. Tony stands over him, coffee cup in hand, shaded brown eyes unblinking. "You okay there, space cadet?"

"Yeah," Steve says. He rubs his face, feeling over his sore eyes and sleepless-thin skin. He's started to look as awful as he feels. If he could get sick, they would have put him in the hospital by now. Humans aren't built to keep going like this, but he hasn't been human in over seventy years. When was the last time that Steve slept for more than three or four hours in a row? Was it in the transitional apartment, a cool body pressed to his, slow breathing under his hand?

The image it conjures, the physical sensations it replicates, make Steve feel sick. Maybe it's all the coffee? He's heard it's acidic, heard people talking about how too much of it can trash your stomach lining. That's his explanation for now. His aching body, strained mind, and shifting emotions are all due to too much bad coffee. They're certainly not from the fear that he may never look into lively night sky eyes again, or hear the soothing sounds of a voice he'd thought he'd lost forever. As unfair as it was to lose Bucky the first time, to almost die by his hand, it would be so much worse if Steve had him again just to lose him for real.

As broken as Bucky is, he's broken in all the ways that fit against Steve's sharp edges and bruises, just like he's always been. They've always been able to fit together like that, like blood-stained glass mosaics. Even after Steve became a star system, even after Bucky became a supernova. They fit like there's a reason that they know each other, like they're supposed to lay together in the dark and forget. Steve likes to believe that, anyway. It's some solace that Bucky will come out of this alive, himself, fractured but not shattered again. How many holes can moths eat in him before he falls apart for good?

"Stop looking like I killed your puppy," Tony says, bringing Steve back to the present world—the sleek, ultramodern kitchen, the white lights around the edge of the table, the cold-to-Steve but still hot coffee cup in his hands. "Who pissed in your coffee?"

Steve raises an eyebrow, nodding his head toward Tony. "I don't know, I thought it was you."

This earns a single, genuine bark of laughter from Stark. He pats Steve's shoulder again. "You should take a break. You deserve it." He yawns and then downs another large sip of awful coffee. Tony looks at his wrist and the table lights up under Steve's hands. In the middle, it reads nothing but 03:41 AM. JARVIS reads the time aloud. "Well, that's enough of a break for me." Tony leaves his cup on the table and stretches. "See you at a reasonable hour."

"Yeah," Steve says, a little numb. "You too."

Tony sighs. "I'm not kidding you. Get some rest." He presses his hand on the table. "No alcohol, though, got it?"

"Tony, I can't get drunk—"

He winks and lifts his hand to reveal two tiny, chalky pills. "They're legal," he reassures Steve without prompting. "But it's heavy stuff. They're the only thing that worked for me when I..." Tony's hand rises to his chest, over the mundane patch of skin under his clothes. "Figured it'd be worth a shot."

"Thanks," says Steve, picking up the pills. He examines them and then takes them, swallowing with the last of his coffee.

"Don't mention it." Tony walks to the door to one bank of elevators, then turns back around to face Steve. "Really. Don't."

Steve salutes him with a wink before heading for the elevators on the other side of the floor. He's almost dead on his feet when he gets to his bed five minutes later. Tony was right, those pills really do a number on your system. Falling on his bed, on top of the unmade covers, Steve passes out and sleeps for the first time in what feels like another seventy years.

Thankfully, he has no dreams.

Steve wakes up like he was knocked out cold, and his body feels stiff and heavy. He groans and rolls, trying to find a comfortable position for sleep. But it feels like there's something pulling no matter how he lays, and a damp heat sequesters him. His brain is all steam and darkness and confusion, like he's walking through a thick rainforest in the middle of the summer and he doesn't know how he got there in the first place. How did Steve end up in his bed? How did he actually sleep?

There's chalk dust at the back of his mouth and the taste makes him remember. Tony, the coffee, the sleeping pills. He must be allergic to something in them, though, because he's stiff like hayfever and the flu used to make him. At least he doesn't feel half as bad as he did when he got sick before. Aside from the brain fog, confusion, and a little worry, he's perfectly fine.

Steve manages to move enough to look at the clock on his bedside table. He must've fallen into bed at four, five in the morning. The cool blue digits read 01:37.

"JARVIS," he asks through a sore jaw and gums. "How long was I out?"

"Twenty hours and twenty-eight minutes." The numbers appear on the side of the table under his clock.

"Fuck," says Steve, turning his head to his pillow. He swears into the material. That was a whole day he missed, sleeping in his room. That's enough time for Bucky to come back—or go away forever, depending. The scales seemed tilted to the latter. "What do my readings look like?"

"You're displaying the symptoms of a mild allergic reaction," JARVIS replies, in speech and text.

"You're calling this mild?" Steve tries to gesture to his body, but he's all constricted by his sheets.

"Your immune system is far more advanced than that of a typical human." A chart appears on the side of the table, one that Steve's intimately familiar with. In green, the average activity of an unaltered immune system appears as jagged mountains of lines. On top of that line is one in blue, making a steeper peak and then fading off. The blue is Steve's. "The allergens should clear your system by tomorrow morning."

"Thanks, JARVIS." Steve's eyes feel heavy, heavier still than his body. He rolls over, sheet tangled between his limbs, and succumbs to sleep again.

This time, he does dream.

Of long white hospital wards that keep stretching and stretching as he walks through them, the door at the end of the hallway looking farther and farther away. No matter how far, though, Steve can read the name on a small bronze plaque on the door: J. B. BARNES. Above that plaque was a larger one, shiny steel, that has numbers engraved in it. They change whenever Steve looks at it, but they don't matter anyway. He knows the patient behind the door.

Suddenly, the hallway slams to a stop and he's inches from the door, breath leaving fog on the name plaque. Steve steps back and assesses the now half-open door, then walks into the room beyond. It's very, very dark inside, the kind of dark that sticks to your skin and pulls at the little hairs on your arms and face. "Bucky?" he asks, walking through the darkness.

It smells like the room his mother died in. There's nothing until he bumps against a hard object and a bed appears in front of him. Laying on it, right arm attached to an IV drip, is Bucky, half-conscious. He's in full Soldier regalia, leather and darkness and all, only missing the goggles. The mask on the lower half of his face looks more like a crumpled hospital mask than anything else.

Bucky's eyes are the same as they were, forest hazel, staring absently at the ceiling. He looks dead, waxy and pale. Steve reaches out to check his wrist for a pulse, picking up Bucky's left arm (all flesh and bone again) to find it. There is none.

And then Steve is in an alleyway that extends into darkness from a brightly lit street. The wrist he holds is metal, and there's a humming feeling instead of a pulse. It's a block, Steve realizes—he's blocking a blow from the Soldier before him, starless eyes and all. He tries to dodge, but he's too slow and it grabs him by the leg, making him trip and land face-first on the dirty concrete. And then he's running, running through the dark and getting further and further away from the lit street. The Soldier makes chase, its footsteps making the ground rumble. Or is Steve just shaking in terror?

Steve comes out on the other side of the alley, into a dimly lit street with air the color of pale syrup. It's the same street, only as it was when he was young, with far fewer lights and cars and less colorful shops. His chest stings and he has to lean forward, breathing hard to fill it. It's not working, he's choking on sepia particles and the world's going dark.

The Soldier steps in front of him, towering, and Steve recognizes the unfamiliar-familiar hands on his knees, the old slight fog of his gaze, the constriction of a chest that just doesn't work right. It has his shield, but the colors are stripped off it in long diagonal lines like claw marks. Without a word, it lifts the shield over its head and swings down. Steve raises his arms and—

Is alive, is back to the new normal, is covered in sweat in the Avengers Tower, staring into the corners of the dark ceiling like the Soldier could be hiding just behind the shadows. He doesn't feel as stiff, thankfully, but his chest is tight and his movements are shaky from the nightmare. His senses don't catch up to him for a moment, and then there's half-noise and forms projected above him.

"Are you alright? You appear to have had an unpleasant dream."

Steve laughs. He laughs until his chest is sore and he's out of breath. He doesn't know why, but "unpleasant dream" seems like the understatement of the century. It's a dream he's had before, at least in shape and format, but it's never felt so real until now. Dreams can't hurt you, he thinks, but that's also laughable. A dream? That was a dream?

It felt more like the nightmare he’s living.

Chapter Text

"Any luck?" Natasha asks as Tony comes up for his fifth coffee that night.

"Jesus!" He steps back from her. "You startled me."

"It's not my fault that you're too tired to see straight." She smiles, learning back in the chair. Her tea is steeping, wisps of steam coming from the cup. It smells like summer raspberries.

Steve can't help but ask. "Are you sure this is okay for you?" He eyes Tony again—the tired stoop, the gritty bloodshot eyes, the dark places on his face.

"I'll be fine," he snaps, turning around to make his coffee. With Nat in the room, Steve knows he won't drink his first cup as soon as it's made. Tony might not think that Cap notices things, but Natasha notices everything.

Steve wants to tell her that he thinks Stark misses the arc reactor and the feeling of stars in his blood, but he can't figure out how to bring it up. Besides, Natasha doesn't seem interested in talking about any of that part of herself. She's the most normal-looking of them all, at least. Her skin hardly glows, and her suit dampens it to complete darkness. There are stars in her eyes that you can only see when she meets yours (a rarity). There's the finest dusting of gold and silver and blue on her cheeks and brow, independent of the glow, but it's far less noticeable than Steve's almost-twinkling freckles.

"I've been worse, " Tony adds, shuffling back to the elevator on his side. "I'll see you in a couple hours."

"If you're still conscious," Natasha calls after him. Steve hides a laugh and she rolls her eyes and switches mostly to sign. He doesn't really get it, does he?

Get what? asks Steve.

That he's not... There isn't a word to describe them, that group of engineered and augmented star-people that came after Steve. That he's not one of us anymore.

He always has a cup of coffee as soon as it's made.

Yeah, and have you seen his sweaters when he goes out?

Steve shakes his head. I only see him at night. But he's always... he looks cold. He sighs, staring through Nat for a moment. I think he may have been addicted.

Natasha smiles wryly, her vineyard green eyes lighting up. We're all addicts. He's just the only one whose body doesn't make it for him.

The next day, as Steve dozes outside of Bucky's door, there's a small commotion down the hall in the basement. He can't hear it, staying unaware until Natasha is striding into his peripheral view, moving with a purpose. She smiles tightly at him and tells him to follow her to Stark's level, he may've made a breakthrough.

Steve can't get to his feet fast enough.

He wakes quickly as the elevator slides past almost two hundred levels. By the time the doors open, he's even bouncing on his feet—an old habit he picked up from Bucky when they were kids. Steve was always in awe of him, no matter how much he fidgeted or how little he talked. The slight bouncing motion always seemed to calm him down, when it wasn't a display of happiness. So Steve used it to cheer up, to quell his fear, to remember his friend. He never lost the habit.

Nat leads him to a room off the hallway before the elevator, turning several sharp corners at lightning speed. Steve's dizzy by the time they stop in a darkened room, unsure if he could get himself out if he tried. They're surrounded by hundreds of monitors lined up in panels, some grouped together to show a large picture and others showing single graphs and charts. Tony's working at a desk in the back, facing the door with a projected screen coming from the narrow beak on his desk. He finishes something and dismisses it, then turns off the projection by pushing it back into the emitter.

"What's new?" Steve asks.

Nat sits on the edge of Tony's desk, swinging her legs back and forth. When she's off a mission, she never seems to stop moving. "Tony thinks he might've decrypted one of the pairs of codes."

"Really?" He turns to face Tony. "Is it worth anything?"

Tony snorts and leans back in his chair, head against the wall. The room is a lot shallower than it looks. "Well, yeah, if you need to kill someone."

Something hard and sharp stands up in Steve's gut. "What do you mean?"

"I found the 'kill mode activate' switch." Tony sucks in a breath through his teeth.

"Oh." Steve's shoulders slump. How was this important enough to drag him upstairs and make him interact with people? And why is Nat still half-grinning, legs swinging?

"That's not all," Tony adds.

"I may have... bent the truth a little for Director Fury," Natasha explains. "I told him we needed to get Barnes back to normal soon, before the data could become compromised and used against us."

"And? What did he say?" Steve's stomach hangs over the edge of a cliff.

"The agent who knew the hard reset code— that's all he knew. He did something there for SHIELD, double agent weapons manager. Not too high, but enough to know how to turn it off." Nat shrugs. "He says everyone who worked at his level or higher knew that code. Just in case."

"Just in case" echoed in Steve's mind in Bucky's voice. "So he has no idea how to get Bucky... back?"

"No, but he was able to tell me some of their cyphers." Natasha grins and holds up a small flash drive. "Actually, he told Fury and I got into the file he sent. So Tony's running them through the list right now."

"No luck yet," Tony says, folding his hands on the table in front of him. He glows in the light of all the electronics. "But I've gotten descriptions for codes like, 'kill the witnesses' and even a 'play nice' kind of thing. Guess they had one for every occasion."

"When should we know which one is the right one?" Steve was bouncing faster on his feet, watching Tony intently.

Stark brought up the projected screen once more and moved around a few programs. He zoomed in on one of them and flipped the image so Steve and Natasha could look at it. A real-time chart, showing a sharply moving green line moving across a white grid. "That's the progress graph," he explains. He taps one of the other programs and it appears in front of the graph. It's a long bar with numbers written over it, moving quickly. About a quarter of it is filled with dark blue. "That's the progress bar. We should have the list decrypted and sorted in..." Tony flips the screen back to his side and inspects the bar. "Probably by tonight, or noon tomorrow at the most."

Steve almost jumps for joy and wants to hug Tony. "You're a miracle worker."

"Hey, Tasha’s the one who pulled the strings and got the info. I just mapped out a program and dedicated most of the system to running it." Tony shrugs.

Steve smiles at Natasha. "Thank you so much."

"You're not the only one who misses someone they used to know." She half-smiles in return. "He taught me how to kill."

Steve looks at the ceiling, trying to sleep. The shadows of the room paint shapes on the smooth, blank surface like a canvas. If he unfocuses his vision just enough, he can make stories out of them. Stories about friends, about learning how to fight, about looking into someone's eyes at midnight on a foreign beach and never wanting to leave their side. Stories, too, about knives and murders and the steel-cold stare through the sight that he would recognize anywhere.

It hurts to sleep and give up to the mercies of his mind, playing back fond memories and moments he'd rather forget against the backdrop of the present situation. Steve doesn't want to acknowledge this, not any of it. He wants to sleep to escape the nightmare that he's in already.

This time, he's out for twelve hours and he doesn't even need Stark's pill. He hasn't asked for them since the allergic reaction and the fever dream that followed. Steve still dreams, and it still hurts, but nothing feels as real as it did in that one dream. Though he experiences the jolting shock of being shot through the head by a bullet made of ice, it doesn't throb under his skin like a sore. He could swear he felt cuts on his face after that dream.

Tony wakes him this time, not a fall or a gunshot or a sickening crack. He's bouncing on the floor by Steve's bed like it's Christmas morning. Steve always leaves the light in his room partially on before he goes to sleep; that way, nothing can harm him from the darkness all over. Tony looks blurred and smeared to his tired eyes.

"What the hell's your problem?" Steve mutters, trying to block him out. "I finally get some goddamn sleep and you—"

"We figured it out," he says, and suddenly Steve is upright, clear-eyed and alert.

"Take me down there."

Steve doesn't bother to change out of his sweatpants and old shirt before taking the elevator down with Tony. It descends in silence, falling and falling into darkness and beneath the ground. At the very lowest floor, it shutters to a stop and the doors open. The security guards hardly even glance at Steve and Tony as they pass, and the door to the cell is unlocked when Tony tries it. Natasha sits in the dark by Bucky's cot, semi-illuminated from below by the light of her phone. Steve sits next to her and Tony behind them.

"Is this really the code?" he whispers.

"Yes. According to several standard records, reports, and references, this is the soft reset code."

Steve takes a deep breath. He looks at the form under the blanket on the cot, staring up at the ceiling through half-closed lids and edges toward it on his knees. It takes a minute, but he finds a hand and takes it. Whether that's more for him or for Bucky, he can't tell. They'll both need comfort. He's down on one knee in the silent bubble of the detainment cell, quiet enough that he's sure the others can hear the idling motors and gears from Bucky's arm.

Tony stays back. Natasha moves toward Bucky's head, so she doesn't have to shout and startle him. She takes a deep breath, glancing down at her phone, steadying her hands. But her voice doesn't shake when she reads out the code, a mix of syllables and phrases that Steve can't make sense of.

The hand in his grip stiffens, then relaxes again, fully. Bucky's eyes close all the way. For a moment, hardly a half-second, he doesn't move and Steve is sure he's dead. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth, breathing hard. There was a chance this wouldn't work, and...

Fingers wrap around Steve's palm. He looks, opens his eyes, and Bucky's breathing. Real breaths, slow like he's asleep, with his head tilted to the side and his eyes motionless under their lids. In the moment, he looks like he used to, the first time they shared an apartment. Steve can find the same exact lines on Bucky's face, the gentle curves of his lips and brows, the way his hair falls over his forehead, the way his teeth set when he falls asleep.

Nat nudges Steve's leg with her foot, then tilts her head toward Bucky. Steve nods and looks back. He lets go of the hand and reaches for Bucky's shoulder, shaking him lightly. "Bucky?" asks Steve. "Bucky, can you hear me?"

"What? 'f course I can, lemme go back to sleep." Bucky turns his head away.

"Who am I?"

He moves so he's laying more on his side than his back, face to Steve. "You're the goddamn President of the United States," he slurs, eyes fluttering and locking on Steve. "Nah, you're Steve Rogers. You're Captain fucking America. You're miles better."

Steve smiles—beams, really, his whole expression lighting up. "Who's that?" he asks, gesturing toward Tony.

"The fuck are you trying to pull on me, kid? All I see 's a smug asshole." He makes a face in Tony's direction. "God, this was his fucking idea, wasn't it? How much did I drink?"

Steve opens his mouth, but Natasha approaches, dropping into a crouch within Bucky's line of sight. "Who am I?" she asks, in that voice, the one she only uses when she's pissed off or trying to intimidate someone.

"Natalya Romanova," he breathes, eyes closing. "Fuck." Bucky tilts his head back against Steve's arm. He opens his mouth and says something that Steve can't understand. Then he says several more things that Steve also doesn't understand.

Nat responds in kind, voice going softer and her speech speeding up. She grimaces at the end of her statement, but Bucky gets his most infectious shit-eating grin on. He laughs softly, then coughs, body still stiff from not moving. Natasha says one last thing that sounds like a question.

"Nata, I know it's not '43 any more. Hasn't been for a long time." He shifts so he's laying on his back once again. "Can't be '83 either, since Rogers and Stark are here." Bucky tilts his head toward her. "But you're here, so everything wasn't a dream. That makes it... '15? '14? That or I'm dead, but I doubt Cap'd be waiting for me where I'm going. 'S gotta be twenty something."

"Thank god you're back," says Steve, leaning forward and moving from being down on one knee to standing on both. He's struck with the sudden urge to kiss Bucky, but this would be the wrong time for that. So he settles for pushing sweaty hair out of his face.

"I'll always come back, asshole. Don't doubt me. When I said end of the line, I meant the end-end." Bucky groans again and curls inward like a wilting plant. "Sorry I thought you were your dad," he says in Tony's general direction.

"It's okay," says Tony, voice small.

Steve doesn't move. He watches Bucky start to fall asleep again, breaths slowing and evening, face relaxing. After a few minutes, Natasha stands up and almost has to drag Tony out of the room, leaving Steve and Bucky alone in the dark. But this is the place he'd most want to be, in any situation. "Can I?" he asks, pushing Bucky toward the wall a little.

"You don't hafta ask." Bucky moves over as much as he can. "Fuck. Feels like I got hit in the head, but a lot more inside." He brings one hand up to cover his ear. "What happened?"

Steve climbs in beside him, pulling the blankets up to their shoulders. "I'll tell you in the morning," he promises.

"I'll make sure to be there."

Chapter Text

Bucky has good days. He can talk and smile and hold Steve's hand like when they first lived together. There are days when there's light in his eyes, distant twinkling stars like mica dusted behind his lens. Days where he mostly remembers before, remembers Brooklyn and Coney Island and the apartment on Flatbush, remembers the taste of the sea in France (and when Steve tells him that people still find relics from D-Day on Normandy's shore, it sends shivers up his spine). There are days when Steve genuinely believes that Bucky has a chance at getting better.

Bucky also has bad days. Silent and moody and hiding in the shadows, curling away from Steve's almost-burning touch. He's lost, confused, and frightened; he knows he should remember more than the crunch of bones under his boots or the sound of a gunshot miles away, but that's all he feels. There are doctors in military uniforms in his head yelling at him in Russian and code, making his ears ring. There are days where he looks at Steve and thinks of a mission instead of a friend.

There are also in-between days, which are the most common. Bucky doesn't talk much. His eyes are glassy but not closed-off like the black night sky, his limbs are tense, he hears ringing and an endless loop of murder songs in his ears. But he also stays close to Steve, asks for memories or books, tries to make sure Steve is real. Sometimes, he needs to remember that he's real, too. His mind floats in between a moving war zone in human skin and a childhood under tall buildings and strong arms. Bucky's never sure if either of them are real. He has night shivers and terrors. All of him is doubt.

Steve's glad that he's eating the food now, at least. Bucky was so sick when he first reset, disorientated and physically ill. He's still suffering from decades' worth of torture and experimentation and electric stars being forced into his veins. Steve watches him closely, even on the bad days where he's confined to a chair in the opposite corner while Bucky rocks on the cot with his hands over his ears. He is made of reassurances—no, I don't hate you—that wasn't your fault—no, I remember it too—don't worry, They're not here—I'm here and you're here and we're both alive. No matter how he phrases it, Steve gushes with euphemisms for "I love you." Their relationship has returned to the shadowy space between words where they hold hands and share a bed and kiss each other's foreheads, but they never talk about that. Bucky is too insistent on "I don't want to hate you"s to ever think to say "I love you."

Though Bucky eats food and drinks water, he refuses the medicine that Stark sends down with Steve. He turns down everything from the homemade sleeping aid to over-the-counter pain pills. No. This place isn't going to become just another facility to him. He won't let Them push capsules or ideals down his throat, no matter who They are. Just because something inside of him is broken, there's no need to fuss over the breaks and try to patch them back together with white glue. If they can heal, they will heal.

Steve only has nightmares when Bucky's too tense and paranoid to sleep with someone else and he's sent back to his bedroom. Without cold weight in his arms, or pressed against his back, or tangled in his hands, Steve feels flesh made soft by water and damp soil, sees the animated taxidermied remains of his "best friend" coming at him with a gun, smells disinfectant and rusting and rot. He doesn't try the sleeping aids again, and Tony only offers them for Bucky. Knowing that Bucky is safe, at the very least, lets Steve sleep at night.

Days and nights blur together in Avengers Tower, where hardly anyone has a schedule and most of the team doesn't officially get up until noon. Nobody knows when Tony or Natasha sleep, only that they seem to be awake for at least four hours in the middle of the night, in the kitchen or elsewhere. In Tony's case, he's usually tinkering with something in one of his many labs. For Natasha, she goes to the highest level gym and either dances or practices fighting forms to work out her energy. That's just how she was built—she doesn't produce much heat or light, making her less conspicuous, but the extra energy coils in her blood and makes her muscles twitch.

Steve's in the kitchen for a couple hours at a time in between long spans of absence. When Bucky needs space and he can't sleep, he goes to the kitchen. It's a safe place for him. It's quiet, even when there are other people, and the coffee's good (when Stark's not the one making it). He's also not too far from Bucky, a good few floors down from his own room, sitting by the elevator that could take him all the way down in less than five minutes. The kitchen is his sanctuary.

So it's a little surprising that Steve, who's been camping in and out of the kitchen for a month and a half, has never once seen Bruce. He knows that the scientist lives in the building—Tony's mentioned it a couple of times and his designated floor is occupied. But Steve hasn't seen him since the last meeting after the Battle of New York. Part of him is glad. Since he first read Bruce's files after Fury recruited him for the Avengers Initiative, Steve's felt immense guilt, as though it was his fault that the Hulk happened. Would there be a Hulk if Steve stuck to the shadows? If he hadn't frozen? If he wasn't star-blooded?

Thinking about the what-ifs only sends him into a spiral that sucks him down, so Steve tries to ignore his guts lined with guilt like lead.

It's nearing four in the morning and Steve steps off the elevator into the kitchen. He stretches, yawning. His sleep wasn't too horrible, even if it was only a couple hours long. All he needs to do is have some coffee, maybe a bite to eat, and go down to check on Bucky. Maybe he can get Bucky to eat if he brings something special. The pantry is the size of a walk-in closet, after all, and Steve's seen countless treats on the shelves. For all that's changed, one of the most jarring things about the future is the variety of brightly-packaged products. He can't tell the difference between the ten brands of painkillers on the shelves. He's pretty certain that some of the variants of the same medication are just the base medication repackaged to sell more. Everything is so bright in the supermarket, and Steve avoids it as much as he can.

Steve looks up from where he was staring at his bare feet to think and sees that the table is occupied. There's only one other person in the room, and he can't mistake that hair for anyone else. The other person is even wearing brown-purple again.

Bruce seems to be the source of the eyes on him and smiles when he sees Steve in the door frame. He puts his coffee aside and tells Steve good morning in awkward ASL. Unfortunately, his face stays blank and confused when Steve goes on at length about his state of mind. Oh well. It was worth a shot. Bruce was facing him anyway, though not meeting his eyes, so lip-reading wouldn't be impossible.

"Sorry," Steve says, crossing the room. "I didn't know you'd be up here."

"I couldn't sleep," says Bruce, blowing steam curling out of his cup.

Steve turns around to start up the coffee contraption. He yawns and rubs his eyes, trying to stay on his feet. Physical exhaustion doesn't get to him. It's the emotional exhaustion that's the worst. He thought that waiting for Bucky to come home was hard—he thought looking at a face he knew better than his own and seeing nothing was hard—he never would have guessed how hard distance hits when you're in the same room. There are times Steve wakes up with cold bruises on his neck. There are times he's half-asleep until Bucky rolls over and looks at him with a blank stare of nonrecognition. There are times he's sitting in the chair in the corner, flipping through a billion chain emails Tony sends him, and he feels the laser sharp burn of eyes watching him for a fight. There are times he sees it, the Soldier, in Bucky's face, and there is nothing he can do to stop that.

The helplessness is probably the worst. He's supposed to be helpful, isn't he? He's supposed to save people and institute freedom. But all Steve can do is watch and hold and whisper, hoping things are getting better but losing track of the days since Bucky's last screaming nightmare, the hours since he last looked at Steve like a predator at prey.

The coffee machine dings and Steve takes his mug out from under it. Without looking, he adds the right amount of sugar and cream, and he stirs it as he walks to the table. He almost falls into his seat and puts his elbows on either side of the cup, staring blankly into the swirling caramel whirlpool. Everything feels so distant, like he's crossed a veil and now resides in that dark place where They hid Bucky, but he's farther from Bucky than anyone else. Steve can at least talk to Tony and Nat and Clint and—

Yes. Bruce is indeed sitting across the table from him. He can also talk to Bruce.

He looks perfectly normal sitting there under the bright lights, but the white china of his teacup reflects his faint greenish glow. The files had said something about doubly-ionized oxygen causing the color, but Steve doesn't have the grasp on physics to figure out what that means. All he's been able to gather is that whatever happened to Bruce (the reports never quite specify) involved massive amounts of star radiation, and that's enough to make Steve too sick with guilt to continue reading.

Steve drinks his coffee so he doesn't have to say anything, looking at the wall a few inches above Bruce's head. His hands shake a little. In the heat of the moment when they first met, Steve didn't have time to think about the past. He was still adjusting to the future, the foreignness of the technology and alien involvement. Now that he's used to it, used to living in a world where most electronic devices can talk to him, he doesn't have the confusion to hide behind. Steve doesn't realize that he's had all his coffee until he's been pouring nothing but air into his mouth for a good few seconds. A little embarrassed, he puts his cup back down.

Bruce says something.

“Hm?” Steve asks, looking up but not quite at Bruce. “Could you please repeat that?”

“I don't blame you,” he says, and Steve stares in disbelief until he restates it in sign.

“Y-you—”

The door to the kitchen opens and heels clack on the tile floor. Natasha, still in all of her gear, approaches the table. She nods at Steve, then looks at Bruce. “Hey. Have you talked to Tony lately?”

“Can't say I have.”

“Well, we just got back from something and I think he wanted to talk to you.” Nat raises an eyebrow like the sentence is supposed to mean something that Steve isn't getting.

“Right.” Bruce stands, puts his teacup and saucer on the counter by the sink, then heads for the door. “Talk to you later, Steve. Thanks, Tasha.” And then he's gone.

Natasha sighs and takes his seat across the table from Steve. She lifts her leg to the edge of the chair to pull down a few zippers on one of her boots, then kicks it off on the floor. The same set of motions and she's out of the other one.

“What's up?”

“Tony makes so much noise. I can't believe he hasn't got us killed for all of his funny little motor sounds and clanging metal.” She puts her gloves on the table, then runs a hand through her hair to pull out the hair tie. “Would you help me unzip this?” Steve almost flushes, and Natasha just smiles at him. “Don't worry, I don't really care about who sees me in my workout clothes.”

Steve stands up and hesitantly walks to her. “Clint won't mind if I—?”

“Clint? Why would he mind?” She wrinkles her nose.

“I thought you were—”

“Christ, and I thought Yasha was making it up when he called you oblivious.” She still smiles at him. “But I'll let you off the hook since I'm sure what Clint and I have looks weird to someone who predates the use of 'going steady.'” Steve blinks in utter confusion. “Clint's my quasiplatonic partner. It means we're 'more than friends' but not in a romantic way. I'm not interested in other kinds of relationships.”

“Oh,” says Steve, “that explains that. Um, is there a word for...?”

“Yeah. I'm aromantic and asexual, and Clint's just...” She sighs. “...really, really unlucky with dating. And a lot of other things.”

“I kind of noticed the egg thing.”

Natasha laughs and it almost startles Steve. “I can't believe he's got half the tower doing it now.” She straightens up. “It's only one zipper, down my back.” Nat pulls her hair over her shoulder and turns around.

Steve, stuck without a way of understanding most of what she'd say to him if they tried to talk, just walks up to her and puts a hand on her shoulder for leverage. His fingers find the small, smooth pull, and he loses it a couple of times before he succeeds in pulling it down. The zipper goes from the base of her neck to her tailbone. She takes it from there, pulling her arms out of her sleeves and pushing the rest down until she's standing in nothing but a grey camisole and thin, matching shorts. Nat ties her hair up again and heads for the coffee machine.

“Stay there,” says Steve, pointing at the chair. He picks up his own mug. “I'll make it for you.” She doesn't say anything, just sits down and smiles. The kitchen goes quiet except for the buzz and bubbling of the coffee-making monstrosity.

Bucky's asleep when Steve enters the cell, and he's curled into a shivering ball on the bare mattress (Steve had to fight for that, something about safety problems and using the springs, but what would Bucky try with those?) beneath the heavy blanket. He strips down to his underwear and slips under the blanket, pressing himself to Bucky's back and curling around him. It feels so familiar—the sharp, labored breaths, the warmth and cold, the weight around them. For a little while, they can pretend to be in their tiny, unheated flat without having to care about the monsters surrounding them. For a little while, they can be nothing but Steve and Bucky, the initials “SR & JB” carved into a tree (Steve doesn't know who it was, but someone drew a heart around the words), almost-lovers but not quite touching. Steve kisses the back of Bucky's head and falls asleep.

Chapter Text

"Y'know," Bucky says, eyes closed, head laying on Steve's lap, "I bet I'd feel a lot more human if I wasn't stuck in here all day." Sure, the cell is roomy and nice. He doesn't make a lot of a mess. Everything works fine. They even replaced it both times he broke the mirror (and only the first one was an accident). Steve's with him as often as he can handle. But it's hard being trapped in the same room and just your thoughts, eternally echoing off the walls and around your brain. He feels almost heatsick.

Steve dog-ears the book he's reading and puts it down next to him. His fingers comb through Bucky's hair, untangling the small knots he finds. He always used to say that Bucky'd look great (or even greater) with long hair, but it wasn't nearly the style then. Now, though, he can just tie it out of his face without getting threats for having long hair and spending all his time in Steve's company. "I'm trying." Steve sighs and idly runs a hand down the side of Bucky's face. His lines are familiar, even where they're interrupted by scars.

"Tell Fury that I'm gonna kill someone if I'm stuck in here much longer." He snorts. The room goes silent except for their breathing. "Which was a joke," Bucky adds, heart pounding in double time when he thinks SHIELD may take it seriously. He rolls toward Steve and hides his face.

"He's not—it isn't him. Fury's just worried because Agent Latour—"

"Who?"

"Agent Latour. He's the guy who was a double agent when SHIELD didn't know HYDRA was still around. Guy's probably one of the most HYDRA-savvy guy we have, aside from you." He pokes the tip of Bucky's nose.

"Only sometimes," he says. Bucky has maps and diagrams and formulas and instructions and medical records all etched in his head. When he isn't all the way there, on that side of the dark, it's hard to access them without a blur like he's looking at them through snow. "I mostly hear screaming when I think of that place." He's smiling, but it's just on the edge of forced. The lines in his face pull at his scars.

Steve makes a noise. "Touch okay?"

"Touch fine."

He folds his arm between them to rub Bucky's shoulder, slowly massaging it. Nat taught him that one. She's been keeping an eye on the cell during those endless days and nights when Bucky's too far away to deal with being around Steve. Seeing a familiar face helps, be it his former mentee or his best friend.

Bucky closes his eyes and relaxes against the pillows. He starts drifting off, into a content and peaceful space, when Steve rubs against the bad graft on his shoulder blade, the one he keeps scratching at. That startles him back to full consciousness. "Fuck!"

Steve stops when he sees Bucky's eyes open. "Sorry."

"No, no, it's okay." He rolls onto his back, laying flat on the mattress beside Steve. Bucky rolls his shoulders. "I've just been bothering that one."

"They have medicine for that, you know." Steve unfolds his arm and seeks out the cool metal of Bucky's left hand. He entangles their fingers, receiving a gentle squeeze in return. The arm warms quickly against Steve's body heat.

"I don't trust them."

"I know." Steve's occasional helplessness makes him want to scream. "Is there anything I can do?"

"I'm gonna try and sleep." He pulls the blanket up to his shoulders and breathes consciously. Steve starts to move, to get up and let him sleep in peace, but he stops him. "Stay?" It's barely a question.

Steve tucks himself under the blanket, too, laying on his side and watching the rise and fall of Bucky's chest. He reaches out to rest his hand on a heartbeat more familiar than his own. With the cold against his side, he rolls onto his stomach while keeping a hand on Bucky. Their breathing synchronizes and Steve's out before he knows it.

Clint flips pancakes as well as he shoots arrows, making them perfectly golden brown on each side with the right consistency between. He piles them onto several plates sitting to the left of the griddle. Behind his back, Natasha and Steve take advantage of the fact that he can't see them to talk privately.

It's not even about Clint, necessarily; mostly, they talk about Bucky. How does he act when he's around Nat? How is that different from being around Steve? What does that say? All these weeks, Steve and Nat have worked informal shifts to keep an eye on their best friend and former mentor, respectively. She takes the chair in the corner when he's having a bad enough day that he can't see Steve. Nata is safe—though she's not a handler or superior, Bucky trusts her instinctively from years of training her. He knows what to expect from her. His own actions frighten him sometimes, so it's good to know what to expect.

Steve takes over on the good days and most of the in-between days. Bucky doesn't let him take the corner chair. If the urges become too strong, he's the one who perches on it, watching Steve sleep with dark-glowing eyes. The rhythmic movement of Steve's chest is familiar and calming from years of watching it for irregularities. There are times he's still amazed to see Steve breathe so smoothly, so easily. The wonder he discovered sharing heat in the bunkers hasn't worn off yet.

Some nights, his head is still there, and he's troubled by the void tickling his skin like it's crawling over him, taking him over, lapping him up slowly. There are times where he doesn't know where he is, or when he is, or who he is, and clings to Steve just for warmth and comfort. Even on some of his worst days, Bucky doesn't leave Steve's side. No matter how often he dreams about spilling blood and tearing the other man apart, there are times when he simply needs Steve.

Halfway through Natasha's report on the past night, her hands go silent. She jerks Steve closer to the wall by his shoulder and collar. He moves just in time to see a small, roundish thing soar through the air and hit Clint squarely in his side. Motion by the door draws Steve's eyes, and there he sees Sam holding some kind of aluminum foil and soda bottle rocket launcher under his arm as he high-fives Tony, grinning. Tony's eyes sparkle.

Clint doesn't move from his pancakes, just shoots a glance at Nat over his shoulder and returns to flipping and stacking and pouring. He's filled one of the big pots that makes enough spaghetti for most of the team with pancake batter that he measures and pours without looking. At his look, Natasha passes by Steve, one of the most delightedly cruel looks on her face. He's almost afraid for Sam and Tony.

Steve catches a few words from the conversation—Natasha's teasing "boys," her threatening tone, her laughter. Sam and Tony are still horrified. She asks a question and Sam hands her the makeshift egg-throwing device, which she snaps without a second thought. Nat tosses it to Steve, who pushes it into the garbage. One more statement, and both Tony and Sam are turning back toward the elevator, looking at their shoes. She dusts off her hands and rejoins Steve at the table, apologizing as she sits.

Steve assures her that it's fine—she mentioned something about the eggs the other day, didn't she? What's up with people throwing eggs at Clint? Where did it start? Why?

Nat smiles broadly. She had her reasons for throwing eggs at him a couple of times, and once Tony caught her doing it, he joined in without an invitation. Clint doesn't mind it, but it's a mess to clean off the floor and his clothes.

That doesn't answer all of Steve's questions, but he thinks he might be prodding too far if he asks about anything else. Besides, Clint unplugs the griddle and turns around with a plate in each of his hot-gloved hands. He sets them on the table. The pancake stacks must be at least a foot tall, composed of twenty-something pancakes. He tells them to enjoy and takes off, as he does, into the shadows.

Natasha calls him a melodramatic nerd, almost making Steve choke on his pancake.

Reshuffling his conversation with Natasha in his head, Steve absently stacks and straightens and stacks and straightens the small deck of index cards in his shaky hands. Two chairs to his left, Nat sits with one leg crossed above the other. The leg on the floor bounces up and down, and her fingers play invisible notes on a piano on her thigh. The idle motions make Steve think of Bucky.

The thought makes him doubly sick and light inside. Bucky is—incredible, for all of his fuck-ups and unconscious bad habits and bad dreams. That's why Steve's here, after all, in both the literal and figurative sense. He's waiting to talk to Agent Latour and Director Fury to plead Bucky's case and let him have some activity around the tower. And Steve—Steve would not be breathing if Bucky (he's sure it was Bucky, nobody else would have been able) hadn't saved him all those months ago. If Bucky hadn't saved him all those years ago in cold rooms and colder skin. It's funny to think that his human heater's the cold one of them, now. But it all balances out.

After the longest while in known history, the door to Director Fury's office opens, and a security guard ushers them inside. Beyond the door is Fury's desk, where he sits, flanked by Agents Latour and Hill. Steve has seen Agent Latour exactly twice—the night in the hotel room and the time Tony tried to get secrets off him. He's tall, thin, and impressive-looking, with an angular face. His smile is tight, and it's hard to tell whether he's faking it or his face just doesn't work that way. His shoulders are squared and his posture is neat, orderly. There is not a wrinkle, crease, or speck of dust on his standard issue SHIELD agent uniform.

"Director Fury," Steve greets, nodding his head toward the man. "Agent Latour, Agent Hill." He nods at each of them in turn and then takes his seat. Latour doesn't return the gesture, his smile as carved and tight as ever. But his eyes, smokey off-green-blue, see right through Steve. Natasha also greets them before sitting in the chair to Steve's left. While he's maintaining his posture—partially to make him seem more professional and convincing, partially because his muscles are tight with anxiety—Nat leans to her right, elbow resting on the arm rest, one leg crossed over the other.

"Captain Rogers," Fury replies, "Agent Romanov. It's nice to see you today." He lacks the usual dry humor in his tone. He shuffles through some papers and straightens them on the desk in front of him. Steve can't let go of his own notecards. Fury glances over Steve's shoulder to ensure that the door is locked before continuing. "We're here to discuss the housing arrangements for our current detainee. Now, according to these two," he says, pointing to Steve and Nat but neck craned to address Latour, "believe that Barnes is stable enough to have more control over his situation."

Latour's face doesn't change. "There is no point where he would be considered remotely stable enough to live outside of a specialized holding environment. It would only take a few words and the a— he would kill everyone in sight. We cannot risk that."

"No, we can't," Fury echoes. He looks at Steve. "What do you think?"

Steve flips through his sweaty, smeared notecards until he finds the right one. "He didn't hurt anyone when his mind was reverted to his time with HYDRA, sir. And I assure you that he's never touched me without my permission."

"I can back that up," says Romanov, sitting up straight. "Barnes is reliable. He talks about bad thoughts, but he has never once acted on them."

"I beg to differ, Ms. Romanov. We lost four agents in the fight at the hotel. It may not sound like much, but considering we're working with only so many agents, they were valuable." His smile doesn't falter or even twitch. It's hard to believe he's real. "Any further confrontation would doubtlessly lead to more unnecessary loss of life. We are talking about a man who can only fight to kill and is literally incapable of doing otherwise."

"And killing him wouldn't count as 'unnecessary loss of life'?" Steve asks, barely able to hold the flood of anger in the back of his throat. "Bu— Barnes isn't going to fight anyone, unless he's provoked." He spares a derisive glance at Fury out of the corner of his eye.

"And what would it take to provoke him, Captain Rogers?" Latour's voice softens. "I've seen him in action as the asset—"

"So have I! That isn't him—"

"Quiet, Rogers," Fury cuts in. He nods at Latour to continue.

"I've seen the way they built him to work." For the first time, the tight smile is gone from Latour's face. The lines on his forehead and cheeks become more pronounced, pulled downward by time and fear. His eyes are wide, almost bulging out of his head, and one can only imagine the horrors playing out before his eyes. "There's a reason we dealt with him in the armory. That is no man. That's a weapon."

"So am I," Steve says. "So is she," he looks at Natasha, who nods. "So is Banner, technically. So is Tony, at least when the suit's concerned."

"You're all on our side, Captain Rogers." Latour smiles again, weakly. There's wear around his eyes, tiredness. "And the code words that would affect Agent Romanov aren't public knowledge."

Nat shakes her head. "It took half a month for Tony to decipher one of those codes." She fixes the wall behind Latour with a cold, hard stale. "There isn't a lot different between Barnes and me."

"You've made a successful mental recovery, Agent Romanov—"

"And Bucky's on his way there," Steve cuts in, one more time.

Latour frowns and folds his hands in front of him. He looks as though he's about to talk, to add something, but a meaningful glance from Fury keeps him quiet. "We don't have enough information to know whether or not Barnes is safe," Director Fury says. Behind him, Agent Hill nods. "It wouldn't be the smartest thing to let him leave his cell at will, but it's inhumane to keep him stuck there."

Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, waiting for the worst.

"Sergeant Barnes is permitted to leave his assigned cell as well as the detainment floor, but only if accompanied by one of you. He may not leave the 50th floor kitchen. Do you understand that?"

Nat and Steve manage to say, "yes, sir" at the exact same time.

Chapter Text

Bucky can't sleep.

No matter how he tries or what he does, his overworked mind refuses to silence itself and stop turning and turning and turning. Every thought is like a hot coal added to a raging fire until it all burns cold and takes the world with it. There's a burning behind his eyes that clouds his vision like smoke and static. His mind rages all the time with blood and war, reliving sticky dark nights in Ukraine at the same time as cool French coastal mornings. Steve goes from friend to enemy, from stranger to target, mystery to the person he knows better than himself. And all day, itching at the back of his mind, his old name, the name, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.

He's not used to it yet.

Nata is a shadow to him, a flitting apparition watching him with sharp electric camera eyes in the corner of the room. She doesn't talk much. They have a mutually-understood silence, the kind that comes from years of synchronized fighting and training, from having brains that worked the same way before whatever They stuffed inside to destroy free will. His silence with Steve is different—it's tense most of the time, rather than understood. Yasha and Nata—old names for old people who never really existed—speak the same language.

Steve is completely alien to him once more. When he's in the cell, it's Bucky who feels like a shadow. A ghost, lying on the mattress, making no indentation and leaving nothing but a chilling of air where his body is. The language they share is the same, constructed out of hand movements and short questions and timed silences, but it's been years since either of them have used it. Trying to speak it is like grasping at straws for an empty memory, something that should be there but isn't quite. There is so much space in his head where there used to be pieces of his identity, his memories.

Yet Steve treats him like he hasn't changed, though maybe he's more careful. Bucky sure as hell doesn't feel like himself, but he doesn't remember what it felt like to be Bucky Barnes. If Steve treats him like Bucky, then maybe he's still that person somewhere. Maybe there's still hope for him.

That doesn't make it any less hard when he wants to kill Steve. Steve, who trusts him like a fool, who sleeps defenseless beside a living rumor of an international assassin with a known mission to kill him. Steve, who doesn't begrudge the invisible knives in his hands that he's used to kill Steve so many times in his head.

Bucky does not want to hurt Steve. Now that he's more balanced in his head, he can overrule the instincts telling him to strike the finishing blow and report to HYDRA. But he doesn't want to, he can't bring himself to, there's no way he's going to kill Steve.

Maybe that's why Steve trusts him. When he's himself, he's consciously not a weapon.

For all the tips and tools he's learned over nearly a hundred years of insomnia, Steve still can't force himself to fall asleep, not when his head is buzzing and imaginary cold bites at his fingertips. He's just as overheated as usual, but he curls up under a heavy comforter and pulls it tight around himself anyway. It keeps out the cold that tries to seep into his bones and leech out his warmth, his light. The face he imagines when he thinks of the creeping chill makes him sick.

Though he's sorely tempted, Steve doesn't try Tony's sleeping aid again. The allergic reaction and pseudo-fever dream that followed aren't worth half a day of sleep. Besides, it looks like Tony might need them more. The man is running himself ragged trying to patch the hole in his system where somebody broke in and checked his finances when he wasn't looking. Now that the more immediate problem of Bucky's brain function isn't looming over him, he's obsessed with fixing, fixing, fixing whatever it was that let someone slip through.

Steve stares at the ceiling, thinking of all the other bodies sleeping above and below him. He wonders if Tony's sharing a bed with his partners—or if they're sharing a bed while he works his body into ruin. He wonders if Natasha is on her floor, or if the nightmares were bad enough that she took the lift up to the topmost floor where Clint resides. He wonders what Bruce is doing—probably sleeping, considering he and Steve are keeping almost opposite hours. He wonders what Sam might be up to, but then remembers that Sam is the only one of them who has a normal job. He wonders if Bucky's okay, if it's worth a trip down to the secure zone to check on him.

He almost asks JARVIS to project a feed from the detainment cell, but he ultimately decides against it. Steve knows how it feels to be watched. And, though he doesn't know it to the same extent as Bucky, he knows how it feels to be blocked in by paranoia. Bucky wouldn't mind, so to speak, not since he's trained to keep his door unlocked at all times, but it would be rude of Steve to presume. He wants to let Bucky decide as much as he can.

The shadows in the big, empty master bedroom start playing tricks and Steve rolls over to ignore them. He stares at the big expanse of empty wall before him like he's trying to find God in drywall and paint. He stares until his eyes start to burn. He stares and he finds nothing. Under the blanket, Steve counts his fingers over and over and over again, just to have something to do. The repetition is soothing. He closes his eyes to darkness.

Just as he's about to drift off, something in the room around him changes. The air pressure, the presence. The ambient temperature drops by about ten degrees Fahrenheit, but Steve can hardly tell from under the comforter. There are eyes on his back now, piercing like blades, and he rolls over, dreading what he'll see.

Bucky stands in the door frame, leaning against it in a flat attempt to imitate casualness. His eyes are open wide, glowing like the moon from the expressionless, scarred field of his face. His hair's short, like it used to be, combed to the side, dark-dark brown like he just showered. He's wearing pale blue jeans and a familiar shirt that looks a little too big on him. He beckons with his right hand, the barcode numbers tattooed on his wrist looking like void seeping into his skin. He beckons, and Steve gets up.

They don't speak, don't touch. Bucky leads him through the winding halls of his private floor, past rooms and rooms full of nothing but dust. Who the hell needs this much space? Steve wonders, and not for the first time. The door to the centermost room is open, and Bucky walks into the darkness, melding with the shadows until he's nothing but a dark-glowing silhouette in the gloom. And, like a fool, like the loyal loverboy fool that he is, Steve follows him.

There are no lights in the large living room that's haunted by the dead. Steve can see the ghosts of his friends, lounging on the couch, talking on the loveseat, browsing through the empty bookshelf. He sees his mother like an imprint in dust, sees her watching him with big proud eyes. He sees a kid, sixteen or seventeen at most, with overgrown hair in his face and a skinny cigarette in his mouth. The kid's eyes, bright and real and hazel-to-green, follow him as he walks toward the window.

Bucky, as he is now, stands at the window, leaning forward on the sill, watching the bright lights and shadows of the city below them. On the horizon, against the river, the sky's starting to turn bloody pink. He watches, still as a statue, face blank and eyes too large for their sockets. Skin pulls tight over his cheekbones, making shadows in the hollows of his face, and Steve wonders when his friend became the hungry, blank thing before him, poised like a nuclear reactor ready to go off when someone enters the passcode.

He looks at Steve with his huge black eyes, and says that he misses the lights from when they were kids. He misses the lights when they were yellow and red and blue and blurry warm, that the bright crisp glow of the city doesn't feel like home. Steve nods along, not opening his mouth for fear of saying the words that will set him off. Bucky climbs onto the windowsill and reaches up, barely touching the top edge of the glass. There's a soft click and it swings outward like a door.

Steve climbs up on the windowsill with Bucky, staring at the wrought iron curls of the fencing around the small terrace in front of the window. It's just large enough for the two of them to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. They say nothing. They're silent even when Bucky looks back at Steve with a wordless, hollow smile and steps onto the concrete attachment to the tower. It's safe, he declares. He winks, his forest hazel eyes glazed-over and reflecting the light of the city. Bucky offers a hand.

Taking his hand, Steve steps from the windowsill to the terrace, and for the first time he realizes how high up his room is. The tower behind him stretches halfway to the stars, so long that it warps and bends over the clouds. He can't see the top. He's not sure he wants to. Bucky, pale-faced and drawn, leans on the fence and looks down. The street below is wide and busy, cars swarming the intersection. People walk on the sidewalks, never looking at each other. The windows are all boarded up, the lights are low down there.

Bucky tells Steve that he misses being those people. Steve asks if they aren't so much better now that they're halfway the stars themselves. Green eyes close with familiar laughter and Bucky reaches for Steve's hand. For once, for the first time, Steve lets him take it.

His stomach flips upside down as the cold hand around his jerks him forward, pulls him up and over the edge of the fencing. It's all that's solid around him. Below his feet, the street stops and everyone looks up with faces like black holes. The teenager whose thin fingers grasp Steve's hand smiles with supernova eyes. He asks Steve if he wants to know how it is to fall, and releases his hand.

Steve lands in his bed, jerking into alertness with the all-too-familiar sensation of falling. There's no breath in his chest, and he has to suck in the air to see clearly. He can taste blood in his mouth and feel frostbite at his fingertips. Shivering, Steve glances around the empty room. He sits up. “JARVIS, what time is it?”

“Four seventeen.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Two hours and thirty-six minutes.”

He breathes slowly, taking sips of air like he's about to vomit. His hands shake, his arms feel numb and heavy. The atmosphere around him slowly settles into something familiar and almost comfortable, something real. Steve can feel the goosebumps melting from his skin. He combs hair out of his face and his hand comes back sticky with sweat. He blinks until the tears in his eyes are all gone.

Steve doesn't bother to find shoes or cleaner clothes, leaving his bedroom and walking down the straight hallway to the foyer. He doesn't look through the open double-doors to the living room. Ghost eyes make the small hairs on his body prickle. From the foyer, Steve takes the elevator down, down, down, into the depths of the tower and even the earth itself. His head is blurry, he feels like he could use a migraine pill, and breathing still isn't easy. But he steps into the long hallway when the doors open.

The hall stays the same length as he walks to the last cell in the block, and Steve thanks god for small favors. The door's locked, as it should be—he tries the handle three times to check—and unlocks when he lets the small camera by the cell number read his retina. There's a click as the door opens.

From within the darkness, Bucky perches on the chair, watching Steve enter. He ignores the instinct to roll, find cover, stalk and out-maneuver his target. Dammit, Steve, why are you here? Why now? Why can't you wait on the other side of the glass and watch the zoo like everyone else? Steve looks like an oversized wounded bird clutching its broken and bleeding wing. The air smells like blood, at least to Bucky, and it fills his senses with the kill code.

The Soldier lunges and Steve steps to the side, startled, spinning around to see where the shape in the dark went. It sneaks around him and pounces once more, hitting him square in the chest (that'll knock him down, that'll break his little asthmatic lungs) and knocking him to the floor. Cold hands reach out from the darkness.

In a flash of blue lights and glowing freckles, Steve pins the Soldier's arms to its sides with a crushing hug. He rocks forward, the momentum making its legs collapse at the knee until they're kneeling. It struggles, it struggles, it struggles, and then it leaves Bucky limp in Steve's arms. He says something, muffled by Steve's shoulder.

“Nice to see you too,” he says when Steve pulls back a little.

“Do you mind if I stay?”

“Be my guest.”

Steve releases Bucky, who stands and almost falls again. He takes the metal hand offered to him, Bucky pulling him to his feet until they're standing face-to-face in the dark room. Their heartbeats fall in sync with their breathing until it sounds more like there's one very loud person in the cell instead of two people.

The moment stretches on, Steve's hand in Bucky's, and he hesitates and wonders. But Steve is sick of wondering, discards the thought and the dream. He leans in and smashes his face against his friend's, foreheads colliding before their lips meet in more of a desperate crash than a kiss. But it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Chapter Text

Steve can't stop pacing, around and around and around in the kitchen, stocking feet skidding over tile. There's a mug of coffee cooling on the table, but he couldn't care less. His hands are deep in the pockets of his sweatpants, and he's so worked up that his shirt clings to his torso with sweat. He's not wearing his implant, so he doesn't notice Tony until they're face to face.

"Hi," says Tony, like Captain America didn't almost knock him over. He pushes past Steve and makes for the coffee contraption. "You're up early."

"Haven't slept since yesterday," Steve admits.

Tony raises his eyebrows. "And I thought your boyfriend was finally okay."

"He's not—" he starts, out of habit, but he stops himself before the words get very far. Steve retraces his steps to configure a reply. "Stark," he says, taking on that command voice he has, "do something that would prove this isn't a dream."

Without a sound, Tony opens up the coffee machine and pulls out the old filter. He walks it over to the trash can and drops it in. That taken care of, he puts in a new filter and fresh coffee. He leans against the counter and watches Steve.

"Too bad Bucky didn't see that."

"What happened this time?" Tony's shoulders fall like he's exasperated, but his tone and face are friendly. There's a familiar quirk to his eyebrow that makes Steve sick to his stomach. Something twinkles in Tony's eyes.

"I, um," Steve begins, stuttering. "We, uh, well, something kind of, um, happened and Bucky, he's—"

"You wrote him a poem?" Tony guesses, arms folded across his chest. It's still a defensive pose. "You got down on one knee and proposed to him. You confessed your undying love for him with a tacky cake. You asked him to prom. What'd you do?"

"I might've kissed him, a little." Steve's cheeks go glowing red.

Tony whistles and slaps the counter. "Damn. I didn't think you had it in you." He's met with a venomous stare.

"Now he thinks this isn't real." Steve gestures around the kitchen, arms making large arcs in the air. "All of this. He thinks he's dreaming."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't change the filter in his dreams, either."

Steve sighs. "He doesn't know that."

Tony remains silent as he grabs his cup from the coffee machine, watching the steam bathe his face, downing half the mug in one long gulp. "Tell me everything."

So Steve starts from the beginning.

"Steve," Bucky manages to say after a few long moments of silence. "I-I—"

Steve covers his face with his hands, staring at his fingers. "I'm sorry. That was..." He rocks in place. "That was probably too much. I didn't mean to surprise you, I didn't—I just want you to be okay, and I'm sorry I put my—my feelings ahead of that."

"Steve—"

"I'm sorry, I should've told you. I should've told you years ago, or at least when you woke up. I shouldn't've just..." He takes a long and exasperated breath through his teeth. "I'm sorry."

"Steve," says Bucky.

"Don't apologize," he pleads. "Please don't apologize, you don't have to and I'm sorry."

Bucky's arms are folded across his chest and he's tapping his foot on the floor. He rolls his eyes at Steve. "Thanks."

"I know, I—" Steve blinks and drops his hands, staring at Bucky. "What?"

"Thank you," Bucky repeats with a hint of a smile.

"Why?"

"Because I never could've told you myself." He shrugs and steps forward. There's less than a foot between them. "Too damn scared. I was worried you'd feel bad 'cause that's how you are." His smile brightens a little. "It's another fucking thing that makes you special."

"You—?"

"Always."

"Are you sure?" Steve edges around it. His fingers pick at the bottom hem of his shirt. "You don't remember everything yet—"

"I remember you." Bucky meets Steve's eyes. It's hard to tell without visible pupils or irises, but it's a heavy feeling settling on his shoulders. "I remember holding your hand. S'why I thought I was dead when I saw you. I remember feeling so damn—" He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. "I was so goddamn jealous when everyone swarmed you afterwards. I noticed you first."

"Bucky," says Steve.

He steps closer again, so their chests are almost touching. Bucky puts a hand as heavy as the world on Steve's shoulder. "I'm saying sorry now 'cause I'm kinda out of practice." He leans forward, head tilted up, and catches Steve's lips in a kiss, a real kiss, gentler than before and more natural than just pressing their lips together. They stay there for a moment, chastely kissing, until Bucky starts to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Steve asks defensively.

"It's just that," Bucky starts, having to pause for breath. He's laughing off the edge, like he's about to fall down, a little over the top. "It's just that I was starting to think this wasn't a dream, too."

"A dream?" Steve cocks his head. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I've had this one before, too. Guess the formula just changed a little. Used to be that I'd wake up and you'd be there and we'd be freezing our asses off on some beach and you'd take me home for medical leave." He sighs, looking at the ceiling. "And when we got home, it was normal for a little until you kissed me."

"Bucky, this isn't a dream."

He falls a hand dismissively at Steve. "Mhm, of course it isn't. You're s'posed to say that." Bucky smiles faintly, closing his eyes. "I just hope I can stay asleep a little longer."

"Bucky," Steve insists, but he receives no answer.

"So you've made your boyfriend catatonic because he thinks you wouldn't kiss him in real life," Tony concludes.

"Not boyfriend." Steve nods, though. "He doesn't get that I've dreamed about it, too."

"Of course you have," says Tony with a gratuitous eye roll. "I can't think of someone who loves the same guy he did eighty years ago and doesn't dream about him."

His face is red again. "I can't believe you said that."

Tony shrugs. "I can't believe you actually kissed him, but it's just weird enough to make this not a dream." He smiles at Steve, all bright eyes and messy hair.

Steve snorts. "You're one to talk." The echoes of slipping fingers and falling linger in his mind. He can almost hear the raspy dry winter leaves sound of Bucky's voice when he spoke in the dream. There are cold fingers on his heart still. "Unless you have dreams about me and him."

"Well, it would improve the general vibe of the tower. Especially if he moved to your floor! Then everything would be balanced like feng shui."

It takes all his willpower, but Steve bites back the first comment that came to mind: You're just like your dad. He used to dream about us kissing, too. He remains silent, looking back on long nights in whatever room was large enough to serve as a makeshift lab for Howard. Chatty, chatty Howard, who talked his ear off even when Steve couldn't understand what he was saying. Howard Stark, the only person in the world who knew about his feelings for Bucky. He briefly wonders if Bucky ever went to Howard for advice, or if he'd come forward first.

Tony takes advantage of the silence, standing up and stretching. He finishes his cup of coffee and leaves it in the sink. "I'll see you around, Cap," he says; heading for the door. "Try and get some sleep, won't you?" He crosses the threshold and enters the elevator, disappearing when the doors close, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts.

The thing is, Steve rarely has good dreams about Bucky.

Nightmares? Always. Bad dreams? Of course. Neutral moments? Every so often. It's been seventy years since he dreamed about Bucky kissing him. The interim is full of falling and losing grips and ice-cold water surrounding him. If Bucky kisses him in a dream, it's a distraction and Steve ends up with a knife in his back. Sometimes it's just a method of killing in its own right, pulling warmth and starlight out of Steve and breathing it in. Project Star-Eater. That's what They'd called him.

Steve rolls over and over and over in his bed, looking from the floor to the ceiling to the wall against his bed; from the sheets to the door to the emptiness of an unused bedroom. He's too hot and too cold in turns, shivering without a blanket but melting when he rolls under a thin sheet. The illusion of cold, metal fingers and pulling, warping metal plates brush against his hands like moths dancing around a flame.

This can't be a dream because Steve's dreams are so much worse.

He ends up falling asleep—or knocking himself unconscious with restlessness—into a cold darkness that surrenders him after half a day. Nothing plays through his mind, but he wakes with the feeling of Bucky's cool, chapped lips against his own. Steve's hands curl into fists and he imagines they're each wrapped between someone else's fingers.

It's nearly midnight, a couple hours past the time he usually shows up at Bucky's door, when Steve finally manages to force himself to sit up, rubbing salt grains of sleep from his eyes. His hands are sore. He stretches and leans against the wall, considering whether he should go back to sleep or not. Would Bucky even want to see him? Is he still convinced that everything's a dream? Or would it be better for Steve to leave him alone?

The question answers itself as words suddenly appear, projected, on the wall beside Steve's head. “Captain Rogers,” they read in the Stark-copyrighted font JARVIS uses, “would you like to view the feed from Sergeant Barnes' room?”

Steve groans out a “no,” and then a “why? Is everything okay?”

The words clear and the lit patch of wall flickers for a few minutes.

“Is Bucky alright?” he asks again, more insistently.

“He is not doing well.”

Steve bolts out of bed, barely taking the time to put on a shirt and slippers before he hits the elevator, willing it to go down faster, faster, faster so he can help (save) Bucky. All sorts of horrific scenarios play through his mind. He's able to rule out anything too immediate, any medical emergencies—if JARVIS could wait until Steve woke up, then it isn't something urgent. But if JARVIS persisted in waiting until Steve woke, then that meant there's some kind of problem and it isn't getting better. His mouth is dry when the elevator finally hits the lowest floor. Steve can count the milliseconds as the doors part, and he's through them as soon as he can fit.

The retina scanner blinks at him, and he has difficulty keeping his eyes still. He's all nervous energy and anticipation, dread and a little bit of bright-hot terror. The door opens with a tangible click, and Steve enters the room beyond, trying to make himself look calmer than he actually is. It doesn't matter—Bucky can still see right through him—but it can't hurt to pretend he's composed.

Steve scans the room and sees nothing but the undisturbed bed, the chair, nothing out of place except for a conspicuous lack of Bucky. His heart goes into overtime. “Bucky?” he asks, voice going half an octave up and breaking at the end.

From behind the bed, a solitary arm appears and waves. Steve runs to it and crouches down at the end of the bed. Bucky lays in the corner, curled up as tightly as possible, arms wrapped around his knees pressed to his chest. His breathing is fast, panicked, and his starless eyes are wide. There's a faint sheen of cold sweat on his face.

“Bucky,” Steve says. He doesn't get a reply, but that doesn't matter. “Touch okay?” A brief, clipped nod. Steve lays on his side, facing Bucky, and brushes hair out of his face. His hand lingers on Bucky's jaw, thumb smoothing over his cheek. He keeps his eyes low, only looking up at Bucky's when it's been a few moments since the last time they met eyes.

Bucky remains completely silent.

“What happened?” he asks, then shakes his head. What a useless question. “Do you want to talk about it?” A nod yes. “Can you talk about it?” Head shake no. “It's okay, I can wait. Do you want me to stay with you?” An emphatic, repeated nod. Steve stays where he is, side pressed to the cold concrete floor, eyes scanning over and over Bucky's trembling body.

Slowly, slowly, the shivers subside and Bucky begins to uncurl. His limbs loosen and the blank panic on his face fades back into a neutral expression. Steve remains by his side, thumb gently stroking his cheek. After a little while, Bucky makes deliberate eye contact with Steve, nodding toward the bed.

“Do you want me to carry you?” A nod. “You nerd.”

Steve shifts into a crouch, then slides his arms under Bucky's back. He stands, carrying the other in a bridal style. First, he kicks the blanket to the foot of the bed so they're not laying on top of it. Then he lays Bucky down carefully, slowly. He pulls up the blanket once more and lays down beside Bucky.

“Can you talk yet?” Head shake. “That's okay. I'll be here when you're ready to talk.”

Bucky frowns, then looks at the ceiling for a minute. It's hard, but he manages to produce a spoken sentence: “It's real.”

Steve's heart catches, suspended for a moment. “You mean this? Everything?”

Bucky nods, then rolls over so he's laying on his stomach. He hides his face between his pillow and Steve's shoulder, silent once more. Steve tangles his fingers in long dark hair, absently picking out knots. He stares ahead, into the darkness, maybe smiling. Then Bucky says something into his pillow.

"Hm?" asks Steve.

Bucky pushes himself up on his elbows, a fine tremor rolling through his tense shoulders. "Somebody— somebody told me."

All of a sudden, Steve no longer smiles.

Chapter Text

"Do you think it was the same person who got into your bank account?" Steve asks over the fifth cup of coffee he's shared with Tony. It's one of those nights for the both of them, where they're struggling to untangle these knots tied around their psyches that restrict their blood flow. Tony looks like a turtle caught in a plastic six pack ring.

He rubs at the dark circles under his eyes and stares at his empty coffee cup. "Probably. Or at least working for the same guy." Tony's already started going through inventories and department access to items that are in testing, comparing employee privileges to the encryption on something like the camera slip vests. Nothing's come up missing yet.

"What do you think they want from you?"

"Normally, I'd say money," Tony replies. He yawns. "But seeing how the first thing ended up getting you and Bucky caught, and this last thing making him shut down like that, I'm gonna say they're after Bucky." He rests his feet on a ledge on the underside of the table and leans back so his chair is only on its back legs.

Steve freezes. "But why?"

"Who knows?" Tony shrugs. He stares at the creases and wrinkles on his hands. "Maybe they wanna get rid of him. Or maybe they wanna control him. It could go either way." He resists the urge to flip a coin for Steve. "Have you tried asking him?"

Steve sighs. "He can't talk about it. He just shuts down again when he tries. It's scary, like they know something about him that I don't."

"Sounds like HYDRA."

"Yeah, but there's all of, what, fifteen people left of HYDRA? No leaders, no structure, no plans. What the hell could they be doing trying to—kill or use Bucky?" The thought makes Steve's stomach go cold. He can't bear to imagine Bucky dead, really dead this time, either physically or because there's something in his way that turns him into another person entirely. The Soldier looks like Bucky, sure, it even shoots like him. But everything else about it is lies and gunpowder.

"Well, something like the Winter Soldier could be what it would take to get HYDRA back on their feet." Tony picks at a hangnail on his finger. His eyes are a million miles away. "That, or they want to 'eliminate the asset' before their own weapon gets used against them."

"Bucky's not a weapon," Steve says, on the verge of a growl. If he had laser vision, there would be a clean hole through the center of Tony's forehead. His knuckles go white and he almost shatters the cup he's holding.

"Hold it, tiger." Tony holds up a hand. "He's not a weapon. That's just what they want him for." He leans back in his chair, watching Steve. "That's all he is to them. He's a weapon and either they're gonna use him against us, or they plan on killing him before we get to use him against them."

"We would never."

Tony's mouth goes flat. "I'm imagining you don't have level five security clearance, do you?" Steve shakes his head slowly, dreading what he’s about to hear next. "Some of Fury's bosses are talking about it. For things too dangerous or bloody for the ‘good guys’ to handle. And things that require stealth and the ability to shoot from far away."

Steve wants to punch Tony's teeth out, but he's smiling instead. His lines smooth over. "I thought SHIELD wasn't in the weapons manufacturing process."

"No, but they're perfectly willing to use an old weapon." He tugs at the hangnail with his teeth. "Besides, it's not really SHIELD. It's kind of the government and UN."

Steve goes pale. "Bucky's not a weapon," he repeats, softer this time, almost sounding lost.

Tony drops his feet and his chair hits the floor with a vibration that sets Steve's teeth on edge. "That's what I've been trying to tell them!" He pushes hair out of his face, combing it back with his fingers. In these moments of exasperation, Steve struggles to recognize Tony for himself and not his father. "Maybe they'll listen to you. Hey, here's Cap, he's 'the asset's' boyfriend and—"

He leans forward, forearm on the table, hand curled into a fist. "Do they know?"

"Huh?" Tony looks up.

"Do they know?" Steve asks again, in a voice that makes hair bristle. His eyes flash with starlight.

"Relax, I haven't told them about your little thing." Tony drums his fingers on the table, watching Steve soften. "Anyway, you're kinda biased, but there's a chance that'll work in our favor. Telling them that he's more like the kid you grew up with than a human killing machine would work. You don't have to lie, just... stretch the truth a little."

He considers, staring at the grain on the rim of the table, where wood borders the glass center. Even on good days, Bucky still isn't the flickering flash of a youth from Brooklyn. But Steve's also far from the sick stick figure he once was. Time has changed them—both the time spent awake and aware and the time spent unconscious or absent. It leaves a mark. As much as Steve feels the sting of the wound, he can't start to think about how much worse it is for Bucky. "Fine." At least that would eliminate one source of stress.

Tony claps his hands together. "Excellent! Meet me in my office at..." He glances at his wrist.

"06:22," JARVIS says, both aloud and on the lit display of the table.

"At lunch time, like, 12:30 or so. How's that sound?"

Steve resigns himself to another sleepless day. "Fine."

When he gets to Tony's office, it's 12:45 and Steve's about to burst with nervous energy. He enters the dark, crowded room. The main screen is lit up, displaying an unamused video feed of Director Fury. Tony's silhouette sits against the light.

"We aren't here to investigate a security problem on your end, Mr. Stark." Ow. Fury's pissed if he's calling Tony that. They've known each other since Tony was a kid, Steve's heard, because Fury was around more often than Howard.

"But this little 'security problem' is compromising sensitive data, not to mention how it fucked up Barnes!" Tony slams his hands on his desk, making parts and gadgets rattle. "They sent you that info about my finances. They're planning something and I don't know what—"

"We will address it if it becomes a matter of national security or SHIELD workings." Fury glances away from the camera, eyes looking off-screen. "I'm not here to manage your private security team." The feed shuts off abruptly, the screen still bright and displaying the words CALL ENDED.

"Fucking self-righteous asshole," Tony mutters, head in his hands. "Let's see how you do when I move Barnes to—"

"Is this a bad time?" Steve asks.

Tony startles, nearly jumping out of his chair. He swivels around to face Steve. "No!" His voice is bright and he's smiling. "Couldn't've picked a better time, actually. You still interested in calling the UN?"

"Why else would I be here?"

"Because you love me." Tony flutters his eyelashes before turning around and exiting the closed call. He initiates a new one, dialing in the governmental and UN access codes. "You want me to request an interpreter?"

Steve hesitates. "Why not," he says. Lip reading is difficult enough in person. Over an unreliable, lagging video feed, it might be impossible.

"Let's get this show on the road." Tony strikes a key and a metallic ringing noise filters into the room from unseen speakers. It rings twice, like a phone, before someone answers it. A woman, maybe 40 or so, wearing a grey blazer and tortoiseshell glasses, appears on the screen. "Claire! Just the person I wanted to see."

"That's Ms. Navidson to you, Mr. Stark." She adjusts her glasses. "Why are you calling without any warning, and why are you suddenly requesting an ASL interpreter?"

"Ms. Navidson, I'd like you to meet Captain Steve Rogers." Tony tugs Steve closer, so he's in view of the camera.

"Captain Rogers," she says dryly, "what a surprise."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am," he says in all earnesty.

"Once the interpreter shows up, Cap wants to share some details about that stuff we were discussing—"

"Pray tell, Mr, Stark, to which 'stuff' are you referring?" Navidson asks. "The renewable bio energy 'stuff'? The manned space expedition 'stuff'?"

Tony's face goes from joking to straight in the space of a blink. "The Barnes stuff."

"Ah. The asset."

Steve grinds his teeth and bites back bitter words. No need to upset someone who might be in charge of whether Bucky lives or dies, after all. Tony finds and pats Steve's hand. "Captain Rogers wants to testify for Barnes' mental state."

Navidson rolls her eyes, but looks off screen and beckons someone over. A young man with pale blond hair and heartbreaking eyes comes into the frame. She mutters something to him and he nods. Facing the camera, he introduces himself as Nate the Interpreter in sign. Steve greets him and returns the introduction.

For the next half hour, Steve sits in Tony's desk chair talking (and often arguing) about Bucky and his well-being. He answers approximately five million questions about who Bucky was and who he now is. How has he changed? How is he the same? Bucky's too traumatized and shy to hurt anyone, Steve explains. And returning to espionage or war would just scar him even more. He's safest staying in the tower with Steve.

Representative Navidson asks about the security breaks, and Tony hops back over to plead his own innocence in the matter. Yes, he's investigating the source of the problems. No, he's fairly certain they won't compromise Barnes. Besides, Barnes is due to move to Steve's floor ("He is?"), where he'll have better security. Tony compares Steve to a protective watchdog and nudges him to do his Captain America puppy dog eyes. Steve refuses.

After their little game of 20 Questions, Navidson sighs. "Report immediately if there's another security breach, Mr. Stark. And if anything happens to the as—Barnes, or if he shows signs of instability, we reserve the right to remove him from your custody." She dismisses Nate and turns off the monitor after extracting a promise from Tony.

Steve slumps back in the chair and rubs his eyes. "Christ, I didn't expect the lawyer treatment."

"That's how Navy always is," says Tony, clearing a space so he can sit on the desk. "Pretty sure she used to be a lawyer."

"She'd make a good one."

Tony laughs. "I'll pass on your regards."

"What the hell was the thing you said about moving Bucky?"

"I mean, he is technically my detainee. I'm allowed to choose to house him wherever I want, as long as he's somewhere." Tony shrugs.

"Fury'll have a fit."

"Fury,” Tony says, “can go suck it."

Steve runs into Natasha on his way to tell Bucky the good news. She glances around the hallway, empty but for them and the security guards posted by the elevator, and pulls him aside. They crouch at the end of a hallway, in one of the cameras' blind spots. "You see Tony lately?" Her voice is a hushed, urgent whisper.

"Yeah," Steve answers, "I was just up in his office. Why?"

"Bruce is worried that Tony's taking starblood."

"Um, like a vampire?" He struggles to imagine it.

Nat shakes her head. "While you were out cold, HYDRA experimented with inducing the effects of starblood without the process of making somebody starblooded. As soon as they designated Yasha 'complete,' they drew his blood and tested it."

Steve shivers. He hates imagining Bucky, his Bucky, bound and chained in one of those Chairs, struggling but not moving as blank-faced scientists draw his blood like a routine measurement. "And?"

"It lets humans have starblood capability for a period of time. The crash is awful, and it's addictive as hell, but it's good for cheap, disposable supersoldiers."

"And you think Tony's doing this... how, exactly?"

"He's Tony," Natasha says, "he keeps a few gallons of his own blood in cold storage 'just in case.' Bruce figures that he's using reserves from when he had the reactor." She rolls her eyes. "It doesn't take a lot to boost someone's system. And Tony misses it."

"He drinks coffee straight out of the machine," Steve notes.

Nat nods. "He misses that warmth. Imagine if someone took it out of you."

It's a horrible thought. As uncomfortable as it can be, Steve's used to the heat permeating his body. He imagines himself bed-bound again, but no less Captain America, wracked by the million viruses he missed over seventy years. "Yeah, okay. What can we do if he is addicted?"

"Bruce mentioned something about a counteracting drug."

"The sleeping pill?"

"I think that's what he said. It basically flushes starblood out of your body for twelve hours. Who the hell knows how Tony put it together, but it's potent stuff."

"I got pretty sick when I tried it," Steve admits. "JARVIS said it was an allergic reaction."

"With the amount of starblood in you," Tasha pokes his chest, "I wouldn't be surprised."

"You're thinking of forcing Tony off the blood by flushing his system and sending him cold turkey."

"That's the plan. I mean, it’s a shit plan." Natasha shrugs. "But Bruce thinks that it might be our only plan. So unless you have a better idea..."

"No, no, you're right. We're gonna have to try it."

She pats Steve's shoulder. "I knew I could count on you." Nat stands and offers Steve a hand. She pulls him to his feet when he takes it, and he's surprised by her strength. It's easy to forget that she's starblooded, too. "I'll let you know when Bruce is ready to try it."

"Thanks," Steve says, nodding. "I'll keep an eye out for it."

Natasha smiles and proceeds to walk down a twisting hallway and disappear. Left alone, the conversation echoes in Steve's head. It bounces against the video call with Navidson, the sound of Fury's tone while he talked to Tony. He's distracted as his feet lead him to the door to Bucky's soon-to-be former residence.

Chapter Text

Not two days later, Bucky officially moves into one of the spare bedrooms on Steve's floor.

It was Tony's idea, naturally. A little something to get back at Fury over the security problems. "Well, if they're my security problems, I'm allowed to take whatever measures I think are going to fix them." He leans back in his desk chair, bouncing his leg on the crossbar of his desk.

"Barnes is under SHIELD protection—"

"He's my detainee. You signed that little contract, remember? The one that said something about, oh, 'SHIELD grants Anthony Stark all custodial issues regarding the placement of any detainees.'" He wrinkles his nose. Tony spins his chair so he's looking at Steve. "It was the condition I put in because they insisted on building the cells under the tower. Kinda screws up the feng shui."

Steve doesn't ask why he didn't mention this earlier, why he didn't just move Bucky onto Steve's floor in the first place. It's the wrong time to get on Stark's bad side. Bruce and Natasha are still working out the details of helping Tony while Steve monitors him. Tony's not that different from how he was before he took out the arc reactor, a marked improvement from his lethargy following the decision. He's more nervous, edgy, ready to snap at any given moment—but that's not terribly out of the ordinary for him. Steve certainly hadn't noticed it.

Someone cuts in before Fury has a chance to respond. Agent Latour appears on the video feed, watching the camera more than the screen in front of him. "If I may, Director," he says, "I think Mr. Stark's idea is at least worthy of an attempt. Perhaps it will boost... Barnes' morale and give us a chance to see whether he's fit for reintegration."

Tony grins. "This guy knows what he's talking about. You said you wanted him to stop moping around all the time, didn't you?" Fury opens his mouth, but Tony keeps talking. "This would stop that. At least he won't be moping around a detainment cell."

Fury frowns, a tight line like a scar. "If Captain Rogers is alright with it—"

"Oh, yeah, he is," Tony says. He drags Steve into the camera's view. "Aren't you excited to live with your, um, friend again?"

Steve addresses Director Fury. "I don't mind the move and neither does he, sir." As conflicted and angry he is inside, there's still a strange sort of glee deep in his stomach. It's light enough to keep him afloat. They may not share a room, but he'll be occupying the same general space as Bucky for most of the day. Maybe he can introduce Bucky to all of the other Avengers. Maybe that'll draw him out of his depression.

Fury sighs. "I guess I have no choice, then. You've got control here, Mr. Stark."

"Thanks," Tony says, with the most annoying grin he can muster. It even gets on Steve's nerves, and it's not even directed toward him.

"Next time, consult me first." Fury reaches to turn off his end of the feed.

"Wait! Who's that guy?" He points to Agent Latour, who's still standing behind Fury's right shoulder. Fury glances back, then moves out of the frame.

"I'm Agent Jacob Latour, Mr. Stark." He pulls an ID badge from the inside pocket of his sharp black blazer.

"You're the double agent, aren't you?"

"That I am." Latour laughs under his breath. "Or, I was before HYDRA's dissolution."

"How much do you know about Barnes' current situation?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. I just worked in the armory. I only met him twice, maybe three times, just to demonstrate a new weapon." Latour frowns. "I won't be of much use to his rehabilitation."

"How'd you know that code, then?" Tony asks, just before Steve gets a chance to assemble his thoughts in that order.

"It was standard procedure. Everyone in a department that could encounter th—him learned the shutdown code. I couldn't tell you how it works or what the others are, unfortunately."

Tony flaps a hand dismissively at the screen. "That's alright. You've done what you're here for." He smiles, mouth crooked. "Thanks for the help."

"Oh, you're quite welcome, Mr. Stark." Latour smiles back. "I look forward to helping you more in the future."

The feed shuts off and leaves Steve and Tony in the softly-buzzing darkness.

Halfway up the elevator between the detention center and Steve's floor, Bucky takes his hand. It's a quiet, natural gesture, and he never stops staring at his bare feet. His skin is cold, calloused on the pads but soft on the back. It's familiar. Even the way he looks anywhere but Steve is familiar. There's almost visible patches of dark red on his cheeks.

Steve holds Bucky's hand, smiling at the floor, memorizing the texture. He's lost in thought when the elevator stops and dings, its doors opening. A hand squeeze brings him back to the moment, and he leads Bucky onto the floor. It's still painfully empty. But Bucky's presence already makes up for that. Steve points out each room and hallway, pointing with only his right hand so his left hand never leaves Bucky's grasp. Down the last corridor, he stops in front of the last door before the one to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.

"This is where you'll sleep," Steve says, opening the door. He follows Bucky inside, turning the lights on under the lowest setting. Bucky looks around the room, empty except for a dresser, a nightstand, and the bed. His eyes linger on the bed and he frowns. "Is something wrong?"

"Bed's still made. You don't make your bed." Bucky drops Steve's hand and turns to face him. "D'you prefer that I stay in here?"

"Uh," Steve says, not quite understanding what Bucky means. "I thought you should have a room. A place for yourself, y'know, where I won't be around." He shrugs. "I know you have a thing about privacy, but I think this would be good for you."

Bucky stares through Steve's head. "Did you... not want to share mine? All this time? Did you just stay with me because I...?" His hands curl and uncurl. It's the only thing keeping him from wrapping his arms around his chest.

"Oh, god, Bucky, no," Steve breathes, "no, that's not—" He reaches out, hand pausing a few inches away from Bucky's face. No response. Steve presses his hand to Bucky's familiar jaw and leaves it there. One of Bucky's hands rises to cover it.

"Then?"

"I thought you might want a place to yourself. Somewhere you could stay if you didn't want to... be around me."

"You're afraid I'm going to hurt you." It's a blunt statement. Bucky's gaze falls to the floor, and his hand pulls Steve's away from his face. He takes a few steps back, further into the room, blending deeper into darkness.

"That's not—"

"It's okay," he says, an almost-whistle in his voice, "I'm afraid of that, too." Bucky turns away and walks toward the bed, applying himself to unmaking it. He pulls the blankets and sheets out from under the mattress, shakes them so they're looser on his bed. When he turns around, his eyes stay on the floor. "Thanks, Steve." It's a whisper. "I don't—" He doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything. Bucky just faces his bed again, back to Steve. After a moment's pause, he climbs into his new bed, under the pile of blankets. He lets the weight settle on top of him.

Steve retreats, turning off the lights and closing the door behind him. The guilt in his gut is heavier than the acid, lying at the bottom of his stomach and pulling him down. How'd he fuck this up so badly? Why hadn't he thought that maybe Bucky would take this as an invitation to fuck off? He knows how hard it is for Bucky to interpret gestures like these, especially now, so why didn't he take it into account?

He throws himself into his own bed and falls to the darkness.

There's a cool voice by Steve's ear asking if it can share the bed, share his heat, and he assents. A presence lifts up the sheets and slips under them, pressing against his back. It's cold and heavy and comfortingly familiar. He drifts off once more.

The first time he wakes up, he notices the weight by his back but the lack of motion. Steve rolls over and faces Bucky's face, so much younger and untouched, pale and frozen in a neutral expression. He doesn't feel a pulse from the neck under his fingers, and Bucky's skin is so, so cold, cold like ice, and almost wet and slimy.

The second time Steve wakes up, it's in the real world, and he's covered in sweat and breathing hard, overheating like he has a fever. God. There is nobody sharing the bed with him, dead or otherwise, and the room is silent except for his breathing and heartbeat. The guilt is back by tenfold and it's pushing him into the mattress. The clock on the wall says that it's 01:48 in the morning.

Steve gets up and sits on the edge of his bed for a moment, thinking and catching his breath. Then he stands and walks through his door, through the first door to the right. In the darkness, he can just make out a silhouette in the bed against the far wall. It's moving, ever so slightly; the rise and fall of a breathing chest, the motions of a restless dreamer. He sneaks across the floor until he stands at the side of the bed, knees brushing the mattress.

"Bucky?" Steve asks, and asks again, until the shape in front of him moves. He lifts up the edge of the blanket pile. Bucky rolls over so he can see Steve, eyes spots of glowing black in the darkness. They follow Steve's arm up to his body. "May I?"

There's a pause that lasts hours before Bucky nods his head and rolls back over.

Steve crawls into bed next to him, under the heavy weight of all the blankets piled on top of him, and presses his chest to Bucky's back, wrapping an arm around him. Bucky settles against him. It's a tight fit, the two of them on a twin-sized bed, but they manage. Sleep comes to Steve more easily than it has in decades.

The first meeting between Tony, Steve, and Agent Latour ("Please, call me Jacob," he said, but Steve feels awkward at the thought) is the day after Bucky's moved in with Steve. He attempted to convince the other two to allow Bucky to be included in these meetings, but Latour gave a firm "no" and Tony seconded it. It took him a little to find the function, but Steve sets his phone to record the conversation, keeping it in his pocket.

Agent Latour has a small, modestly furnished office on the floor beneath Director Fury's. The chairs in the room—his desk chair and the three chairs for visitors—are all different, mismatched. The filing cabinet in the back right corner is an ugly 80s shade of beige and dented in more than a few places. Latour's desk is a simple, modular construction of pressed wood planks and metal poles. Everything is just a little too nice, a little too well-matched, a little too deliberate to be genuinely scraped together. But the effect is still clear: Agent Latour is just another person.

"So, Steve," Latour begins, making Steve regret allowing him to be on a first-name basis, "have you noticed anything different in your friend's behavior?"

"Not really. I mean, he's been asleep most of the time since he moved up. He's just trying to adjust, he's never been great with change." Steve looks at the Scrabble-style nameplate by Latour's keyboard. He mentally tallies the numbers.

"How has he been sleeping?"

"About the same as before. He didn't have any nightmares last night." Steve isn't going to say that he still sleeps better by Bucky's side. This is about Bucky, not him, and Bucky seems to sleep the same whether or not Steve's there.

"I'm glad to hear that." Latour plugs a few more sentences into his computer, then turns to face Steve and Tony, elbows on his desk and hands clasped in front of them. He smiles, and it's just as tight and twisted as before, but there's something a little endearing to it. "This is just to establish a baseline, so we can track his progress. I'll have more questions next week."

"No questions about what he was like before he moved?" Steve asks.

Latour shakes his head. "I have access to the video feed from the cell. But I can't watch the videos from your floor without your express permission each time."

"JARVIS keeps them on separate servers," Tony says, a smug grin in his voice. His arms are folded across his chest again. "I don't even have the passwords to get to them. I know how paranoid some of you guys are—" Steve rolls his eyes. "—so I figured I might as well."

"Smart choice," Latour says, still with a hint of that same smile. Steve doesn't trust him, but he might be starting to like him, at least a little. This agent doesn't treat Bucky like either a walking gun or an emotionally fragile five-year-old. That's enough to get a little respect, at least in Steve's books.

"I'll see you next week, then," Steve says, standing up. He waves at Latour, who waves back, and exits the office. Moments later, Tony joins him in the hall. They walk together for some minutes in silence and emptiness.

"What's on your mind, Cap?" asks Tony, after a few too many moments.

"Not much." Steve shrugs. He eyes Stark, head to toe and back up again. "How about you?"

"Nah."

"You've been doing a lot lately. You're really pulling through for me and Bucky, and I just wanted to thank you." Steve spreads his arms and Tony takes the cue, hugging him. Now that he's looking for it, he can feel Tony's body heat through his clothes. He's warmer than he'd been a month ago. "Thought you weren't much of a hugs guy," Steve says when Tony moves away.

"Hey, when Captain America's offering it, I'm not gonna turn it down." Tony smiles, bright straight teeth and dimples.

"Glad to hear you value me." Steve winks and they resume walking to nowhere in particular. After a minute, he adds, "Y'know, if you ever want to talk to me, I'm here. I know a little that could help you if you needed it." He struggles to stay casual, hearing every break and awkward pause in his speech.

Tony mulls it over. "Maybe," he says. "Bruce is a pretty lousy psychologist, anyway. And you're the only one around here whose M.O. isn't really killing people."

"Sam's a therapist, you know."

"Yeah, but he— he wasn’t there. In New York. With the bomb."

Steve drops the smile. "I guess you're right."

Tony looks at his own phone, an experimental piece of flexible glass that only barely resembles the models he has on the market. He checks the time. "Shit. I'm gonna be late."

"For what?"

"Rhodey and Pep and me are all going to see a movie and eat dinner." He fumbles with his jacket, trying not to drop the phone. "Not that I don't like hanging out with you, but I've gotta go."

"Send my regards." Steve barely knows Pepper and has only heard about Rhodey. Still, he's certain they're saints, if they can put up with Tony to the extent of dating him.

When the coast is clear and Stark's nowhere to be seen, Steve slips into a hidden nook that eats the sound in it. He texts Nat, saying that he's got Stark's trust.

Chapter Text

Steve sits and waits for the other shoe to drop. He’s holding his breath, bracing himself for whatever is about to happen. There’s no way he can find out what’s coming, but he can at least be ready. Being ready, at least for Steve Rogers, means having anxiety attacks every night before bed. It’s a good thing that Bucky’s moved to the huge bed in the master bedroom. Having someone to hold makes it easier to breathe. And with Bucky sleeping beside him, he can make sure nothing will happen. He can ensure that Bucky’s still breathing without interrupting his sleep.

They don’t talk about the kiss. As far as Steve’s concerned, nothing happened. Bucky’s seemingly erased that whole day from his memory, and Steve isn’t sure if that’s a relief or a burden. But still, they share a bed. They hold hands before they fall asleep and, more often than not, wake up wrapped around each other. Bucky is the best cold pack for Steve’s brand of searing star-hot panic, and Steve gives off enough heat to comfort Bucky.

They have remarkably fewer nightmares.

Bucky spends the first couple of days on Steve’s floor lying in bed, sleeping through both the sun and moonlit hours. He eats whatever Steve brings him and only gets up to use the bathroom. Steve spends whatever time he can curled against Bucky's side, silent, stroking his hair and face and pressing stealthy kisses to his back. Things have changed so much, but it all feels so familiar that, for a while, they can pretend to be ordinary boys from Brooklyn who are in love with each other.

Four days in and Bucky gets out of bed, so Steve takes that as some kind of sign. He coaxes Bucky into clean pajamas, slowly brushes his hair (pressing knuckles to his part still makes him melt where he's sitting), lends him a sweatshirt. Steve offers to bring Bucky to the communal kitchen, occupied at all hours by the colorful bizarre people that live around them. He hesitates. “We don't have to stay very long,” Steve promises.

They spend no more than half an hour in the kitchen, a little after three in the afternoon. Bucky stares at his tea in stoic silence, ignoring Clint's silliest efforts to get his attention. It's bad enough that Clint looks at Steve and asks what's wrong. Steve tells him it's just an adjustment period, that Bucky's not used to talking to people who aren't Steve or Natasha. Clint nods like he understands, mentions something about important bird business (AKA screwing with Sam), and flies off with his cup of Nescafé.

No more than five minutes later, Natasha Romanov appears once more in the doorway from the entertainment room to the kitchen. She strides in, ripped baggy jeans and quiet confidence, and sits down in the chair to the right of Bucky. Steve stays on his left, only briefly looking down to see Nat. Bucky doesn't relax, but his fingers go still against the sides of his cup and his breathing slows. Nat crosses her legs on the chair and leans forward to whisper in Bucky's ear.

A small smile appears on his face. He glances at Steve, then whispers something in reply to Natasha. Steve can hardly pick up that they're whispering, let alone what they're saying. But it's nice to see Bucky smile again. He missed that. The tension drains from Bucky's shoulders and he talks to Nat for at least fifteen minutes. Steve loses track of the time, staring at the reflective surface of the table and sipping at his coffee, which is starting to go disgustingly cold. But this moment is too special to break by getting up and using the coffee contraption.

Before he knows it, Bucky's in his peripheral vision again and Nat has disappeared. Steve smiles like he's trying to lift the world above his head. Bucky's face isn't blank and glassy, but tired and almost content. He looks warm. There's no more tea in his cup. "Room?" he asks.

Steve gets up, taking both of their mugs to the sink, followed by sharp, watchful eyes. He offers Bucky a hand. Fingers entangled between them, they return to what's now their floor as opposed to just Steve's. Maybe now he can relax.

Bucky gets better in stages. It's hard to tell at first, but he sleeps less and wanders more. Steve watches him, hovering behind him like a frightened guardian hummingbird, looking for any sign of something being wrong. But, aside from the usual symptoms of depression, there isn't anything to find. Bucky spends the day after his first visit with some of the others in bed, silent, but he listens to Steve talk about the news, the Avengers, whatever's changed since the 40s. Anything to keep his mind off what happened—though Bucky doesn't know if it's for his benefit or Steve's.

Two days after their little expedition, Steve wakes up in a panic. He's afraid—of the bright flashing lights behind his eyes, of the familiar screams of the dying, by (Bucky's sure) the flash of a silver finger pulling a trigger. The same things haunt him. But they've been there for so long that he doesn't care about them any more. It's all based on what's inside of him, what's in the cotton-stuffed side of his mind where they put arsenic and formaldehyde and gunpowder.

Steve sobs, curling away from Bucky and pressing his face against the pillow beneath him. His shoulders quiver like they haven't since the winter he caught pneumonia twice, since his fragile body was wracked with coughs his lungs couldn't push out. Like then, Bucky stays by his side with a hand on his back. But Steve is so much warmer now, so much more solid, that it's almost hard to believe he's the man under Bucky's touch.

Steve doesn't show any signs of improvement, so Bucky pulls his hand away and watches in silence still. It takes Steve a moment to notice the lack of touch. Once he does, he lifts his head to look at Bucky, all red-faced and wet with tears. "Stay with me," he says, or tries to say, because the crying makes it hard and his hands shake too much to try and sign. Bucky runs his hand up and down Steve's back, along his spine, around his shoulder blades. "I don't wanna die, Buck," he says into his pillow, voice breaking around the words.

How many times has Bucky heard that voice say those words? It's painful to remember, painful like surgery without anesthesia, the small shocks in his body and head before he was used to the new weight by his side. It's the unmaking of a man. Memories of snowy Brooklyn evenings and endless Russian mornings mix and blend until Bucky sees Steve on the sidewalk in Leningrad, until he rides the subway with his handlers, until he doesn't know if he's aiming at another soldier or a target or whether his hand flashes because it's made of metal or because he's holding his knife.

Bucky very suddenly has to lie down, more than he is already.

He inches closer to Steve, wrapping his arm around the paradoxically familiar broad back. His head rests against Steve's shoulder. The shivers move from Steve's body into his, making the infected stitches around his grafts itch like hell. "You're not gonna die," he says through grit teeth. Can Steve even hear him? Does it even matter? He's saying it as much for himself as he is for Steve. "Damn it, Steve Rogers, I'm not gonna let you die. You don't need a goddamned shield as long as you've got me, alright? You don't need a goddamned shield as long as you've got me." It's the most he's said in weeks, and the old phrase migrates into his mouth as easy as breathing, and he echoes it until they both fall asleep.

Bucky's actually the one who brings up the possibility of visiting the kitchen again. After the first attempt, Steve was ready to back off, if not give up entirely. Even though he'd smiled for Natasha, the exertion left its marks on his bruised-tired face and deep-sleeping body. He'd scrapped the idea by them. But Bucky mentions it, and Steve thinks there might yet be hope.

This time, Natasha is already sitting at the table, in the same chair as last time, gesturing widely as she talks. Across from her is Bruce, who's leaning back in his chair with his arms folded, bouncing his leg on the ground, watching Nat's hands. Bucky slips into his seat, quiet as a shadow, while Steve prepares the coffee machine.

A few minutes later, one mug of sweet pale coffee and one of chamomile and lavender tea in his hands, Steve returns to the table. Bucky's talking, more with his hands than his words, Bruce and Nat both watching his movements intently. They nod along as Bucky tells a story with a few words and a lot of gestures. Steve feels like he's intruding as he puts the cup of tea in front of Bucky. He takes a seat again, putting his coffee on the table in front of himself with a nervous smile.

Steve hasn't seen Bucky talk like that in decades. Back home, nobody understood it when he'd start talking almost too fast to follow and drawing complex diagrams in the air with his hands. By the time he was in high school, he'd dialed it back so only Steve saw that side of him.

Steve knew things about Bucky that nobody else did. Steve knew that social events intimidated him, that he put up a front to make it through school, that he resented how everyone adored his fake self. Steve knew that Bucky could go on and on about pulp novels written for boys younger than them, that he could turn a toaster into a pile of metal in a few minutes—and return it to a toaster just as quickly. Bucky chewed on pencils when he needed to think, and tapped his fingers against solid surfaces to an unheard beat. He would go quiet sometimes, real quiet, not even speaking a word, though he'd respond on paper or in sign. Like teachers pushed Steve to lip read and struggle to make out soft sibilant sounds, they pushed Bucky to sit still and talk on demand while regulating his volume. That's just how it was.

In all his years of knowing Bucky, Steve has never seen people listening to him like Bruce and Natasha are. He's never seen Bucky delight in telling people anything, not like this. Bucky was quiet and withdrawn even before the war; it's amazing that he can express this much afterward.

Steve ruminates over his coffee, catching snippets of phrases from the other side of the table. His chest fills with a strange warmth as he watches Bucky out of the corner of his eye. So animated, so alive. It's more than he could have asked for.

Eventually, everyone runs out of coffee or tea, and starts making to leave. Steve keeps an eye on Bucky to know when to go. The moment drags on until Clint walks into the room, wearing a ridiculous apron and holding floppy oven mitts. Natasha stands and darts to the fridge, grabbing one of several egg cartons and pelting a couple of the eggs at him. One smashes against his leg. Clint manages to catch the second one, but it still splatters over his hand.

Bucky, eyes dark and cloudy, looks at Steve and nudges his hand. Steve tangles their fingers and heads for the elevator. He squeezes Bucky's hand, trying to express his pride and his overwhelming affection.

"So, Tony says he's going to stop taking starblood," says Natasha as she and Steve pace around the garden on the roof of the tower. It's covered in lush green grass and tiny bright flowers. There's a square building to one side, a storeroom and station, and a helipad on top of it. From up here, they can see until the shifting city lights turn indistinguishable from the glittering reflections on the water.

"And?" Steve asks. It's Tony—there's gotta be a catch.

"When," Nat tells him, "when he's figured out who the mystery guest is."

Steve groans and covers his face, tilted up to the sky, with his hands. He wipes them down his cheeks. "If he misses it so damn much, why doesn't he just replace the arc reactor?"

"Because then it's not a choice, it's just a dependency. Taking it like this is a choice."

"Like hell it is."

Natasha shrugs. "That's Tony's line of reasoning, anyway. At least he's smart enough to stay away from large amounts of alcohol." The last time Tony'd had anything more than a few glasses of wine, he'd woken up naked, wearing the suit, in a deserted hotel off Route 66 with no recollection of how he'd gotten there. The only people who knew what happened were Natasha and Clint, and neither told him or anyone else. The incident eventually became an inside joke, a euphemism ("don't be naked Tony in the suit in New Mexico") for getting completely shitfaced or making a bad decision.

"Thank god for small favors," Steve seconds, rolling his eyes.

"Honestly, I'd rather see him end up drunk in a ditch in Maryland than addicted to his own blood." Natasha makes a face, her nose wrinkling.

"What even happened with him and the motel?"

"You don't want to know."

Steve concedes in his head. His hands dig into his pockets as they continue to walk around the garden in silence. The clouds look close enough to touch. He loses himself in thinking of ways to help Tony, a frustrating attempt he's failed before. Just before he reaches the point of giving up in exasperation, Natasha stops and grabs him by the elbow, turning toward him to better sign.

I think he's been bothering Navidson, she tells him. Trying to bring her around on Bucky.

She doesn't seem to like him, Steve agrees. Representative Navidson is worse about the situation than Director Fury; at least he treats Bucky like a human being. She talked about him like a ticking bomb waiting to go off, and it bothers Steve to no end that so many people still seem to think of Bucky as some kind of blank-slate weapon. He’s not, and he never will be again, as long as Steve has any say in it.

Keep an eye on him, Nat tells him. Steve snorts. Keep things normal, a routine should help him. And contact me immediately if something isn't right.

Steve promises that he'll keep an even closer eye on Bucky and send her updates every day as they walk down the bare metal staircase back into the main part of the tower. They go their separate ways by the bank of elevators in the walls. He returns to his shared floor to get on the job Nat gave him.

Chapter Text

Steve wakes up, and something is very, very wrong.

His body feels unusually heavy, his head stuffed with cotton and pulled apart. His joints are all swollen stiff, and they crack when he frees them from their positions. He feels more ill than he has in a long while. There's something freezing most of his face, making it hard to open his eyes and survey the scene.

Nothing looks out of place. Everything is as it was when he went to sleep, from the angle of the door to the mess of notebooks on the bedside table.

Steve scratches at an itch on the side of his neck and looks around, only to find everything normal. "JARVIS," he says, voice weak and a bit raspy. "Did anything happen last night?" The usual light projects onto the wall, like JARVIS is about to speak. It flickers and flashes, the space where text usually goes replaced by garbled symbols and glitches. He can even hear the static garbles from the ceiling. "Uh, uh, nevermind." Anything to stop the noise. If that didn't wake up Bucky, it would be a miracle, but Steve hasn't heard anything from that side of him yet.

Bucky is still there when Steve rolls over, asleep on his stomach, arm stretched out so his hand hangs off the edge of the bed. His feet poke out from the bottom of the blankets. His breathing is slow, calm, and even. He's alive.

Steve lets out a heavy sigh and lays back down on his pillows. It'll be a pain in the ass, but he'll have to get up and find Tony to figure out what's going on. He nudges Bucky's shoulder to wake him. "Hey, Buck," he says softly, "c'mon, we gotta see Tony about something." Bucky remains silent and Steve rolls his eyes. He shakes Bucky's shoulder harder and talks in his normal voice. "Bucky, get up, I'm not leaving you here." He still doesn't move. "Bucky?" Steve sits up again and takes both of Bucky's shoulders, gently rolling him onto his back. His body is limp and pliant. There's breath in his chest, and his heart is still beating, but he's not waking up. There's a horrendous blankness on his face. "Fuck."

Steve struggles to get up and shuffle around the bed to Bucky's side, joints and bones creaking in ways he hasn't heard in decades. He lifts Bucky by the armpits and takes him in a fireman's carry, arm wrapped around his waist. Unconscious and not moving, he feels so fragile, the same way he felt when Steve saved him the first time. It's surreal to pair the lightness with his enhanced and perfectly trained body. Is this how light Steve was before? Bucky carried him like a newspaper.

But maybe that's just how they are. Always bailing each other out. Maybe it's not as hard to carry someone you love when you're saving their life. Steve hopes that he's not saving Bucky's life this time.

The electricity is still on, all the electronics are online, it's just JARVIS that's off or broken. It can't be just a bug. No. If it's a bug, then Bucky would be conscious and Steve would have full limb mobility again. Waking up stiff and swollen, with Bucky near-catatonic and a FUBAR JARVIS, means that someone deliberately did all of this. Steve's already got an idea of what happened to Bucky and he doesn't want to think about it.

His strides are clipped and painful as he reaches the elevator. It opens at the touch of the button, and Steve dials in Tony's floor number before the doors even close. On the long, suffocating ride up the side of the tower, he paces from foot to foot and runs his hand down Bucky's spine over and over and over, just to make sure he's still alive. It can be hard to tell, what with the uncanny coldness coming off of him like he's a piece of the winter sky fallen in the form of a man. Steve lifts Bucky's shirt a little and gently runs his fingers over the exposed skin. The rough patches around the grafts are no worse than usual, as far as Steve can tell. Bucky doesn't move while he inspects them.

Finally, finally, the elevator stops and its doors open. Steve navigates through the familiar darkness of Tony's halls. God, it's only six in the morning. Is he going to be up yet? Tony takes his time and sleeps in every morning. Steve's never even seen him awake before noon.

As it turns out, he's awake, along with half of the residents of the tower clustered around him in the kitchen, wearing worried faces and pajamas. Clint perches in a chair, Nat standing behind it and leaning on the back. Bruce sits cross-legged on the floor, a disposable insulated cup in his hand—it smells like some kind of flower tea, maybe. Sam dozes in another chair, head tilted back. Tony sits on a chair, but with his legs crossed on the seat. His hair is all over the place and his usual goatee is messy against a grey-brown five o'clock shadow. Pepper sits at the table, watching Tony with careful eyes. She's the only one who seems even a little composed.

"Nice of you to finally join us, Cap," says Tony. Everyone turns their heads to look at him. "And... 's that Bucky?"

"Yeah." Steve's throat feels swollen and sore, choking up his words. There's hardly enough room for sound to pass out of him. "Couldn't wake him up. JARVIS's broken."

"That's why we're here," Clint says, facing Steve.

"There was a burst of white noise and it woke most of us up," Nat adds.

No wonder it hadn't roused Steve. It's good that he has an excuse. But Bucky slept right through it—it's impossible to tell when Bucky slipped from sleep into unconsciousness, and the static wasn't able to undo either option. How long has Bucky been out?

"Carrying your sleeping boyfriend?" Tony teases, voice strained and blunted.

Steve glares at him. "Mind if I take over the table?" he asks, and everyone removes their cups from its surface. He puts Bucky down like he's trying to make him stand, then shifts to a bridal carry to lay him on the large kitchen table. His breathing is still steady, even, and his body isn't moving.

"Oh," says Natasha. Everyone else is fairly speechless.

"Is there something I should know?"

Nat shakes her head and straightens up, walking from Clint's chair to the table. She holds Bucky's wrist, two fingers on his pulse, silently counting the beats and seconds. Then, she puts an ear to his chest, rising and falling beneath her. She cups the side of his face for a moment, close to tender, before slapping him hard across the cheek. Steve winces. Bucky doesn't. Natasha shifts her weight onto one leg and bounces the other one on the ball of her foot. "Yeah. Looks like he's been shut down. Cold. Not a reset, though." She returns to Bucky's jaw and feels down his neck like a doctor checking for thyroid swelling. After poking and prodding for a moment, she puts her finger on a spot near the back. "That and a sedative," she tells Steve, indicating a small bump with a red prick point in the middle.

"A sedative? I thought those didn't work on you," Sam comments, coming to the table to investigate as well.

"They don't." Natasha's voice is flat.

Steve looks at Tony and scratches the side of his neck again. "Actually..."

Nat meets his eyes for a second. "The sleep aid. It had to do with Stark's sleeping pills."

Tony stands now, walking over to the group with cold coffee sloshing out of his cup. He's pale and haggard with dark circles under his eyes. "Why the hell are you shit talking me when things are this bad?"

"Your sleeping pills are the only thing that's been found to affect starblood at all," Natasha explains slowly.

Bruce pipes up. "They neutralize the energy source and temporarily halt the production of new star cells."

“Yeah, well, some of us need to sleep sometimes. I've been a chronic insomniac since I was eleven.” Stark's hours vary. On some days, he wakes up at 2:30 in the morning and stays up for two days. Others, he doesn't sleep until 11:30 in the morning and then sleeps until 3 AM the next day. The only thing stable about his sleeping schedule is that it isn't normal.

“You think we don't know that?” Steve asks, looking at Tony with his dark-ringed eyes. “Believe me, between the two of us—that's the one supersoldier with an anxiety disorder who can't help but wonder if he's gonna wake up, and the one who's been tortured and brainwashed and doesn't know who he'll be when he wakes up, if he wakes up—there's not a whole lot of sleep going on.” His arms fold in front of his chest.

Tony doesn't always have anxiety about not wearing the suit, not anymore. But being stared down by an incredibly pissed off, exhausted Captain America would make anyone want a suit of armor. “It's not a competition.”

Steve laughs the dry, sarcastic sort of chuckle that means he's at the end of his rope. “You're a real comedian sometimes, Stark. Besides, why do you keep them around if you don't need them? Just for us?” He glances from Bruce to Nat to Bucky on the table.

“Well, maybe I need them, too, have you ever considered that?” Tony wishes he could disappear as soon as the words leave his mouth.

Behind him, Nat signs knew it to Steve.

“And maybe, just maybe, I'm not the soulless jackass my dad was, okay? Just because you knew him doesn't mean you know me.” His hands are shaking, but he's not sure if it's from the rage or the fear.

Steve starts to interrupt, but Sam steps between the two of them. “We have more important things to worry about than who gets less sleep and whatever Tony's talking about, okay?” He looks Steve in the eye. “I know you're tired, and I know you're scared. But yelling at Stark isn't going to wake Barnes up any faster.” Steve wants to protest, but he can't. Looking at Tony, Sam adds, “Yeah, you're wiped and scared, too. There's an enemy in our territory and they know how to disable you, Cap, Nat, Bruce, and Barnes. But I promise you that it isn't him—” He jerks his thumb back at Steve. “—who took JARVIS offline and dosed his partner.”

Tony has to concede. But that doesn't mean he'll go down easy. “You got any bright ideas?”

“Maybe.” Sam looks over Tony's shoulder to look at Natasha. “We need to stay together. We split up, we're screwed. You're the spy, what's the best place for us to first of all, hide, and second of all,” he says, looking at Tony, “reconnect JARVIS and check his tapes.”

Nat answers first. “Tony's secret lab.”

Stark blinks at her. “How the hell do you know about that?”

“You labeled it your secret lab in the building plans. Which JARVIS can provide on request,” she answers coolly. Tony swears under his breath. “But we can lock that down when we get him back online. If we're the only ones around who know where it is, it'll take longer for them to find it.”

“All in favor, raise your hands.” Tony is the only one who doesn't. But behind him, on the other side of the table, Pepper raises hers.

“Pepper,” he complains. “Don't—”

“You're going to need as many hands as you can get,” she says. Pepper looks between Sam and Clint. “If whoever this is is going after starbloods, you're going to need people immune to stuff that targets you.”

“If Rhodey were here, he'd agree with me,” Tony mutters.

“No, he wouldn't.” Tony says nothing else.

“Alright then, we're going to the lab.” Sam heads for the hall. “Nat, you take the lead.”

Natasha strides through the kitchen, postured like she's about to head off on a mission. She looks every inch an espionage expert, even in her pajamas. “On it.”

Steve picks up Bucky again, carrying him bridal style for the shorter trip. He readjusts the hold until Bucky's almost sitting up, head on Steve's shoulder. His left hand hangs to his side, swinging like a ragdoll made of polished steel. He's still breathing.

Pepper passes by Steve with a clearly-enunciated whisper: “Tony's a dick.”

“I noticed,” says Steve. “How do you put up with him?”

She smiles. “I have my ways.”

“Do you teach a class?”

“I should, shouldn't I?”

With that, the half-assembled Avengers, friends, and ex-enemy file into the hallway and head for Stark's secret lab.

Chapter Text

Tony's lab is hidden by one of his expansive walls of computer monitors. Some of them cover a door, and the exact right ones have to be turned off or on to unlock the lab. Natasha and Sam stand behind Tony, the only two who fit inside the cramped office, the others outside. He shuts down another monitor and pulls it back, taking some of the wall with it. A door opens into an expanse of shiny stainless steel and white tile.

"Well, it's a lot cleaner than I expected," Sam says as he walks in.

The group files into the lab until they're all in, Pepper closing the door behind them for Steve. There's a quick buzz and hum and the door locks again.

There are several tables of different types—one with a deep sink and several Bunsen burners, one with an array of burettes held in tall clamps down its length, another with a gas line button and several flasks and deflated balloons, another with an array of power sockets and general robotic equipment strewn across it. All of the wall cabinets are sealed shut with an electronic padlock, as are the cabinets built into the undersides of the black tables. Diagrams, sketches, and a veritable rainbow of Post-It notes cover every surface. A couple of wrenches, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and some sort of large button with multicolored wires sticking out of one end all sit in a bare spot on the table covered with electronic bits. Beside the spot, there's a tall rolling chair made out of springs and cushions.

"Why haven't you shown me any of this?" Bruce asks, walking up to the titration table. He examines several small plastic bottles and their labels. "Hydrogen peroxide, distilled water, distilled water, sulfuric acid, H2O2—"

"I know a joke about that," Tony starts, and he continues despite everyone's groans. "So these two scientists, after a long day of work, they go to this bar. And the first scientist asks for a glass of H2O. The second guy says he'll have a cup of H2O2. So the bartender brings them their drinks, and—"

"Both of them are water, because the bar would be in an immense amount of trouble if the bartender served hydrogen peroxide to a customer." Bruce rolls his eyes.

"And the first scientist is bummed out because his assassination attempt didn't work," Tony adds without humor. Natasha laughs.

"You got a bed or something in here, Stark?" Steve asks.

Tony nods and hits a button on the back wall. A twin-sized bed with a thick, plush mattress and slightly stale sheets pops out of the wall. Steve carries Bucky over and lays him down over the sheets. He rolls his shoulders and looks around.

"Alright. Time to boot up JARVIS," Tony says, taking the rolling chair and dragging it to a large computer sitting at the end of one of the tables. He turns it on and takes his seat. "The power's gonna go out for a minute," he warns, opening a reboot dialog. "It should stay on in here, but I don't remember if I got around to hooking everything up to the backup generator or just this computer." Tony clicks okay. With the gentle sound of rushing wind, the lights all go out until the only visible things are Tony and his computer, Steve's bare skin, and Bruce's eyes.

"Sometimes I forget how weird you guys are," Clint remarks, looking at Steve.

"Isn't this why you're all terrible at stealth?" Sam asks.

Clint snorts. "Probably."

Steve's too tired to respond. He just lowers himself and sits on the floor, dragging one of Bucky's hands with him. His hand wraps around Bucky's fingers and he leans against the side of the bed.

"Give him a break," Natasha says, nudging Clint. "He can't help it." She grins at him and the color-shifting spots on her cheeks light up. Either the sleeping aid attack hadn't hit her—unlikely, judging by the fatigue in Tony and Bruce's faces—or she could shrug it off.

Clint shakes his head. "I never forget that you're weird," he says. But he smiles back at her, eyes softening.

Tony watches his computer screen expectantly. Lines and lines of green code flash over the black screen before slowing down, loading larger processes. His eyes scan over each string as they load, eyes squinted, nail tracing some of them as they scroll past.

"Find anything interesting?" Bruce asks.

"No," says Tony. "According to the computer, JARVIS was just fine when we shut down." Bruce snorts. "Hopefully that means we didn't lose a lot of data."

"Yeah, but he wasn't working when you shut down." Natasha walks up behind Tony, coming out of the dark like a shadow. He almost jumps out of his chair when strands of long russet hair brush his cheek. She reads the lines of code flickering across the screen, arms folded.

"Diagnostics are coming up fine." Tony sucks in a breath. "And JARVIS should be back to normal when he finishes loading. Damaging the code at a level where it would get logged permanently would require sysadmin access."

"How many people have that?" Clint asks, coming behind Tony on his other side.

"Just me."

"Good security," Nat comments. "Bad idea. Not likely you'd compromise your systems by being the only one to know how to access the entire mainframe."

"What, like there's anyone I'd actually give this information to?" Tony scowls.

"I have a few ideas." Nat glances to her left. Sitting on a counter against the far wall, Pepper Potts swings her legs and waits. She always waits. When she senses Natasha's gaze, she raises her eyes and then nods.

"Whatever," Tony says, returning to combing through stacks of code. "It's safe, secure, and stable. Got it?"

"Mhm." Natasha leans back over, resting her elbows on the back of Tony's chair.

"Christ, can you not stare over my shoulder right now? You're starting to freak me out—"

There's a sudden crash and flicker and the computer screen goes blank. Then, there's the generic sound of one of Stark's computers booting up, played through the whole tower. The lights return row by row by row.

"Hello, Master Stark," JARVIS says, words printing on the computer screen. "Today is—"

"Yeah, yeah, that's the right date, Jarv. Can you tell me what happened before you shut down?"

JARVIS pauses to scan through the security camera database. "It would appear that everybody was asleep, sir."

Tony slams his fist on the deck. "Dammit. What's the time of your last recording?"

"3:47 this morning."

Clint looks from the transcript on the monitor to Tony. "Tasha woke up at four."

"3:57," she corrects, looking away.

"Are you sure you don't have anything else?" Tony asks.

"Certain."

"Check Rogers' floor at that time."

The monitor flicks to the security camera view of various rooms on Steve's floor. There's a full view of every room, and multiple views of rooms with more than one entryway, including windows. Everything is dark and still, just as they'd left it before bed. Tony even looks a little offended at the relative disuse of parts of it. In the bedroom, chests rising and falling slowly, Steve and Bucky lay asleep. Bucky clings to Steve, whose arm is wrapped over his shoulders. The timestamp reads 3:45.

“Aw,” says Clint, earning himself a smack to the back of the head from Natasha.

The footage goes like that until 3:47, when there's a skip and nothing but black, followed by the same angle over the same empty bed. The new timestamp reads 4:44, just a couple of minutes ago.

“Shit,” Tony says, switching out of the monitor views. “Who was awake around 3:45, Jarv?”

“Yourself and Ms. Potts,” JARVIS lists, “Director Fury, Agents Hill and Latour, and UN Representative Claire Navidson—”

“Wait, wait, wait, what? Who?” Tony puts a hand to the monitor. “Don't tell me that's what you actually said.”

“Mrs. Navidson arrived via helicopter at 3:15 this morning. She is here to assess the conditions of your detainment center and determine whether or not Mr. Barnes is fit for rehabilitation here or elsewhere—”

Tony's eyes almost pop out of his head. “What? What the hell? Why didn't anyone tell me about this?”

“Did anyone know about this?” Natasha asks, looking around the room. Aside from the unconscious Bucky and sleeping Steve, everyone shakes their heads. “Neither did I. Sounds like Fury was keeping it secret.”

“That asshole.” Tony grits his teeth. “God, I'd bet she's the one behind this. Probably trying to download files off JARVIS and use them to do whatever the hell it is she wants to do with Barnes.”

“It's probably about HYDRA,” says Clint. “Seeing how much he remembers and if he'd be worth keeping alive to finish taking them down.”

“But HYDRA's gone,” Sam says, “we made sure of it, Nat, don't you—”

Natasha shakes her head. “Tasha's told me a lot about them, how they work, from the intelligence she’s scrounged up,” Clint answers for her.

“There are probably secret pockets left around the world. Maybe even here, and almost definitely in the harder-to-search places like Siberia or Antarctica. God knows the KGB had them, and that collaboration was far from the only one.” She straightens up and walks toward the pull-out bed, surveying Bucky's sleeping form.

“Can't you tell them that's it? Send them to the ones in—wherever?” Tony spins around in his chair to face her.

Natasha leans back against the wall, pressing her heel against the smooth varnished wood. “Trust me, Stark, I've already wiped out everything I could find. And there’s nothing from our lab, the Red Room, the studio—” Her voice almost catches on those last words. “Those have been gone for years.”

“Then what else is there?” He's close to pulling his hair out in fistfuls. “What would Barnes know that you can’t find out?”

“He was there for decades of operations never recorded electronically.” Her voice is fast like bullets making ripples in your shirt as they fly just past you. “A weapon, but also a record.” It's as hard as a sheer drop from a knifelike cliff edge. “All told, he probably knows about a few thousand bases around the world.” Natasha chews on her lip, picking at it. “But if the Yasha that taught me didn’t know much”—and he hadn’t, he couldn’t even remember where he came from, his apartment was barren aside from necessities, he had hardly even been a person—“then Bucky probably knows less. No, that info’s hidden behind a few more layers of security.”

“So what, what does that mean?” asks Tony.

“If they don't get information out of him, they might try getting it out of the Winter Soldier.”

Blood drains from Stark's face. He gropes blindly at the mouse to his right and gapes, eyes blanked out. Sam stands straight, shoulders even, attention on Natasha like she's an expert strategist laying out her plans. Clint also straightens up, alert, and both Bruce and Pepper stand on solid ground, watching her. The room tastes hot and heavy and thick like blood.

“Tasha,” Tony says slowly, still staring at her. “You remember the words to the reset code, right?”

Natasha nods. “And I figured out a couple of others, too. Not just shutdown and kill mode. They put all sorts of stuff inside his head, it's amazing there's anything left of him in there.” She scans his face like she's trying to meet his eyes through the lids. “But the Soldier only responds to the commands of its leader. That's its only purpose.”

“Are any of you secretly HYDRA generals?” Clint asks, looking around the room.

“What if we faked it?” Sam adds.

“We're going to make sure nobody else can wake that up, alright?” Tony strikes a few keys on his keyboard and plugs in a very long piece of code, full of idiosyncratic arguments. Something from inside his computer beeps three times, then plays a short series of ascending notes to signal success. “The codes are gone. Someone'd have to know them already to make them work.”

“Let's hope nobody does.” Never let it be said that Natasha is anything but a cynic. History dictates that if someone is looking for those answers, they won’t accept a “no” or “please don’t do that.” Her friends—Clint, Steve, and Sam—and the rest of the Avengers can handle themselves. Barnes is a liability but, more importantly, his body is the only grave for the closest thing she’d had to family for a long time. He looks the most like Yasha when he’s unconscious, but there are moments she recognizes here and there. And they give her a futile, desperate kind of hope that makes her sick to her stomach.

Because if part of the Winter Soldier was Bucky all along, then a part of it has to be Yasha, too—right?

All these years later, and Natasha still worries about Yasha.

Chapter Text

"Okay, okay, the code words are off the server. They're gone forever. No return," Tony says, looking up from the monitor. "There's still the chance she copied the document before I erased it, but this is the best I can do." He leans back in his chair and cracks his knuckles. As hard as the strain was when he first woke, it's even harder now. Tony spins around to face Natasha, Bucky and Steve in his peripheral vision. "Now, whatever happens, don't mention a word of this to Steve when he wakes up, alright? The last thing we need now is Captain America having a goddamn heart attack."

"Don't tell me what?" Steve asks, sitting up from his lean. He still feels all sore and stiff, but his eyes are less gummed-up and foggy. His brain wasn't fast enough to catch everything Tony said, but he picked up enough to figure out that they're planning something against him.

Tony turns to face him. "Steve, glad to see you're awake! We have an idea of who fucked up JARVIS, but we're pretty sure she—"

"Tell me the truth."

Now, Tony Stark is a damn good liar, especially under pressure. He's fooled heads of state into thinking he knows what he's doing. But faced with the wrath of an already pissed Steve Rogers, he's not about to take his chances. "Navidson showed up this morning. She's here to check out detainment and see if Bucky's good to stay here or go somewhere else."

Natasha nods at Clint, who walks over to stand by her. He starts explaining in sign, and she interprets it out loud so everyone else can hear what Steve's getting. "We think she's going to interrogate Bucky and see if he knows anything they can use against HYDRA. Hidden bases, sleeper cell names, whatever."

"Bucky won't remember that."

"Right. So if that doesn't work, she might try and interrogate the Winter Soldier."

Steve looks like he's about ready to shoot through the roof. He gets to his feet and stretches the stiffness out of his joints. "How is she planning on doing that?"

"Not sure," Natasha admits.

"But I deleted the codes we have off the database," Tony breaks in. "So unless she already copied them over, she won't be able to use them against him."

"And if she did?"

"Well then, we're fucked, aren't we?" Tony leans as far back as he can, looking at the ceiling. "I mean, unless she thinks to restrain him. Then we're marginally less fucked." He grins.

"Even if he's restrained," Sam says, "he's gonna get out. She hasn't seen him when he's like that." His eyes dart between Natasha and Steve. "We have."

"Bucky's kind of a stubborn ass when he's himself," Steve adds, "but the Soldier's—determined. And, as far as it knows, it hasn't finished its mission." His face darkens and he looks at Bucky, unconscious on the bed, looking like he's no more than asleep. Steve takes the chance to check Bucky's breathing and pulse. They're both normal. He brushes hair from Bucky's forehead and runs a hand down his jaw.

Natasha chews on the inside of her cheek. "We're going to have to convince them to not try and activate that side of him." She examines her nails, trying to look casual even though her heart's going a million miles an hour.

"How?" Tony asks.

"Remind them what happened last time he was around like that?" Sam suggests, hand on his thigh. God. It feels like yesterday the prone man on the bed with the soft face was trying to murder him. It's been months, but the fear is still present.

"Fury almost died last time," Nat points out. "He wouldn't take the chance. It means she's going to try this under his nose. Hopefully, he's caught on by now."

"I don't know, he can be a dense fucker when he wants," Tony says, turning back to his computer. Navidson is in her borrowed room on one of the SHIELD floors, typing something on a slim laptop. Its screen shines bright white even at the diagonal angle of the camera. Camera-proof. Figures.

"He's also a genius tactician who's been director of SHIELD for a decade and a half." Natasha's voice is tight, clipped. "He's doing what he can around all this red tape."

"Yeah, but he's kinda slow sometimes. Like, when I was in high school—the first time, before I got expelled—he'd take me there most of the week and he'd always lecture me about actually going to classes." Tony rolls his eyes. "Like, okay, dad hired Jarvis to be my father, not you. Anyway, he'd see me walk in so he'd always be super confused when he saw mail saying I missed all these classes even though I was acing them." He yawns, smiling fondly. "I had my first Master's by the time he realized I just went to the library all day, because it was right across the street from the school."

"I didn't know you went back so far," Nat says.

"Are you kidding me? Nick's practically his actual dad," Pepper says, interrupting Tony's retort. That earns her a glare, but she lets it bounce off her. "What was that he said at the first Christmas party he had when I was here? 'This guy got me where I am, Pep, he got me Christmas presents every year.'" She imitates Tony's shitfaced accent perfectly.

"I never said that."

"Actually, sir," JARVIS interrupts, "my security archives indicate that you have, in fact, said those words several times."

"Well, that makes sense," Clint says. Everyone looks at him. “What? Fury was one of the first members of SHIELD, wasn't he? So he would've known Tony's dad. He would've been there when Tony was a kid.”

“Thanks, Clint,” Tony says. “Yeah, Director Fury was around a lot when I was a kid. 'Specially since dad wanted him to stick around during downtime. 'You never know when you're going to need an ally, Tony. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'” He takes on a deep, serious, flat tone when he imitates his father. It sounds nothing like Howard.

“I'm not usually the guy to stop such fond recollections,” Steve interrupts, “but I think we have more immediate things to worry about.” He looks at Tony. “Think we should suit up?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Tony glances down at himself—faded Judas Priest shirt, fleece pajama pants with Snoopy and Woodstock on them. “I'm not sure about you, but I don't feel comfortable fighting in my nightie.”

“JARVIS, are the halls clear? Where's Navidson?” Steve walks toward Tony and the monitor to see the response.

“Yes, Captain Rogers, all hallways are clear. Mrs. Navidson is asleep in her temporary quarters on floor 49.” A sideways diagram of the tower appears on the screen, a bright white dot indicating the group about two thirds of the way up. An arrow points down at least twenty floors. “Safety estimate... 92% safe.”

“What about the other 8%?” Clint grumbles.

“Something that's fucked if they run into us,” Steve answers, cutting off JARVIS' response. He looks around the room and locates Natasha, leaning over Bucky with fingers on his pulse, counting the beats. “Nat, do you remember that wakeup code?” She stands up straight and nods. “Why don't we try it, get Bucky on his feet so he can gear up?”

“Yes, sir,” Nat replies, giving Steve a cheeky fake salute. She looks at Bucky and takes a deep breath. A quick string of Russian flies from her mouth, so quickly that it could confuse anyone fluent. Bucky stirs.

“What happened?” he asks slowly, spiraling through pain and haze. His head pounds. “Christ, what'd I do to my head?”

“Yasha,” Natasha says. “Yasha, what year is it?”

Bucky looks up at her through slitted eyes, covering his face with a hand. “What?” He starts to roll over.

She grabs his chin and forces him to stay still. “Tell me what year it is.” Natasha uses the voice that could chill Steve's blood.

“Fuck, it's... really late, isn't it?” he mumbles. “It's 2015 or some shit.”

“Good.” Tasha releases his chin.

“Can I sleep now?”

“No can do, Buck,” Steve says, striding over and putting a hand on Bucky's leg. “We've got business to take care of. Time to suit up.”

“I don't have a suit,” he argues in the plaintive voice of a tired kid.

Steve glances back at Tony, who shrugs. He grasps for words for a moment before looking back at his old friend. “What about that get up you used to wear? With all the buckles and leather?” he suggests.

“You want me to wear that?” Bucky asks, incredulous.

“Better than nothing, right?”

He half-smiles, still tired. “Fuck you. You just think I look good in it, don't you?”

Steve blushes and squares in, blocking Bucky off from the rest of the room. “You, uh, do realize we have company, don't you?”

“Yeah, but, shit, Steve. They've gotta know by now.” He chuckles at his own unintentional pun. “Might as well tell 'em. Hey, everybody, me and Steve are homosexuals together.” The announcement is met with amused silence. “Told you they already knew.”

“Can you stand up?” Steve asks, trying to get on another topic, any other topic than this. “We need to head up to my floor.”

“Aren't you just gonna carry me?”

“Yeah, but I'll drop you if you get smart.”

Bucky sits up. “Alright, alright. Fine.” He blinks sand out of his eyes and looks around the room, everything slowly coming into focus. “Hi everyone.” A yawn and a stretch later, and he's on his feet next to Steve, half-leaning against him.

“Alright then,” Tony announces. “Alright. Let's get this freakshow on the road. Meet you all in the shared kitchen in...” He glances at his wrist. JARVIS says it's two past five. “Like, half an hour? 5:30?”

Half an hour later, the makeshift Avengers meet in their communal kitchen, all dressed up. Tony's in a only slightly revised version of the Mark VII. Next to him, Pepper's in part of a similar suit tailored to her—gauntlets, helmet, breastplate, and boots. Underneath it, she's in thick jeans and two heavy shirts. Clint sits on the table in his usual purple and black, fiddling with his bow and quiver. Natasha's in the black catsuit with her sigil on its belt—a present from Clint. Sam's in lightweight body armor, sans wings (unless the fighting goes outside, they'd be impractical), and Bruce wears nothing more than slacks and a loose button-down. He's not here to fight.

Steve and Bucky show up last, the former in his modernized classic uniform with his shield clipped to his arm, the latter in gear that suggest the Winter Soldier, only missing the mask and goggles. Bucky looks around the kitchen and has to stop himself from laughing.

“What's so funny?” Tony asks, crossing his arms.

“We look ridiculous,” Bucky replies, looking between all of them. “Look at us.” He's self conscious in the leather and eye black, but it's easier when he's surrounded by people in similar—or even gaudier—gear. “Buncha fuckin’ Fury Road extras.”

“Not as bad as if we were in our pajamas,” Clint mutters.

Tony rolls his eyes behind his visor. “Alright, here's the plan. We're having Bruce—codename Hulk—stay up here to keep an eye on the camera. If JARVIS misses anything, he'll fill us in.”

“You're not gonna fight?” Bucky's seen Bruce in action and respects his restraint when he's not himself.

“Not unless more than two of us are down,” Tony answers. “This is gonna be mostly stealth, we don't need his loud-ass feet screwing us up.”

“Hey,” Bruce says, faking hurt.

“If it's any comfort, I don't think you walk loudly.” Clint smiles and winks at Bruce.

“If you get hurt, go see Sam, or codename Falcon.” Tony points to him. “He's going to be our first-aid guy. If he can't help you, then he'll send you up to Bruce.” He looks around the room. “Never leave the fight alone. We're using the buddy system, got it? You go up to see Bruce, bring someone with you.” Everyone nods. “Sam's gonna be in the very back. In front of him, Barnes, codename...?”

Steve shrugs and Bucky's face goes pale, emphasized by the line of black over his eyes. “I haven't thought of anything.”

“How about Winter?”

He shakes his head. “Too close.” Bucky thinks for a moment, his eyes on the ceiling. "You could still just call me Sergeant Barnes," he offers.

“Alright. Sergeant Barnes is in front of Sam. Next up, Clint, codename Hawkeye. Then Pepper, codename Cherry Pie—”

“We are not using that.” It's a command. She's the only one Tony defers to if he has an idea in mind.

“But it's cute,” Tony whines.

“You just think it's cute because you thought of it. I mean, you come up with the most boring superhero names ever.” It sounds like an old fight. “Iron Man? War Machine?”

“Better than Iron Patriot,” he mumbles.

“Rescue,” Pepper says, and it's final.

“Okay, fine. Pep's in front of Barton. Then there's me—I'm pretty sure you all know my codename, but for everyone who doesn't, it rhymes with fryin’ pan—and then Cap takes the lead. Tasha—Black Widow—is scouting ahead.” Tony looks at his gathered coworkers, friends, housemates. “Keep it quiet, keep it safe. We're not here to kill anyone. You understand?” He looks at Bucky when he says that.

Everyone nods or says “yeah” at roughly the same time. Tony passes out earpieces—or add-ons for Clint's hearing aid and Steve's implant—and looks back at Bruce. “Any questions?” Bruce asks.

“Why'm I in the back?” Bucky asks. His stomach burns with the idea that it's because he's more of a liability than a member of the team, more of a last resort than a front-line fighter. Maybe he should be. He's not a hero like the rest of the team—he's a man made into a weapon.

Tony grins. “Because you, my friend, get to play with this.” Natasha grabs something off the table and passes it to Bucky. “Merry Christmas.”

“Hanukkah,” Bucky corrects without even thinking, taking the long, thin item from Tasha. “I celebrate Hanukkah.”

“Well, then, happy Hanukkah, Sergeant Barnes.”

Inside a long black hard case is probably the fanciest firearm Bucky's ever seen. It's sleek, it's shiny, it has a million buttons and settings. “Woah,” he says, mouth falling open.

“I heard you're a good shot with one of those, so I figured I'd get something to play that up.” Tony's still smiling, watching the look on Bucky's face. “You like it?”

Bucky can't talk, pulling off a glove to run his flesh hand over the weapon. He looks up and nods excitedly, free hand bouncing with him. “He likes it,” Steve translates.

“Great. Everyone else got your weapons?” The others nod. “Then let's hit the road.”

Steve moves to the door, holding it open. Just before Natasha passes through, Clint interrupts. “Doesn't he have to say the thing?”

“Who has to say what thing, Barton?” Tony asks.

“Cap. Doesn't he have to say the thing before we head out?”

Cap blinks at Clint until he signs what he means, and Steve instantly understands. He clears his throat, squares his shoulders, stands up straight and says, “Avengers assemble!”

“We really have to work on that,” Pepper snarks. Bucky nods.