Out of the Dead Land

He recognized the roads as he drove; there was a grim familiarity to the places he passed. This was a journey he'd made before, several times, sometimes with bodies in the back of the car. The Winter Soldier, reporting in for debriefing and reset.

He wondered what was waiting for him. Another bunker somewhere, another office block with hidden rooms, another bank vault? It didn't matter what it was. He'd face it.

A mission. A rescue.

If his instincts were steering him right.

The place turned out to be in upstate New York, miles from anywhere. It had once been a hospital. He knew that. He didn't know how he knew that. A mental hospital, he thought. It looked like it had been abandoned for decades. There were high walls closing in overgrown gardens, and a crooked sign that said Pleasantview. The gates were locked and chained. There was rust on the bars, but none on the padlock or hinges.

Bucky got out of the flashy Maserati from Stark's garage. He tilted his head back and looked at the walls. They were lined with spikes along the top.

Please God let this be the right place.

Without knowing exactly why—though he could make a pretty good guess—his eyes were drawn to a patch of brick no different to the rest. He knew that if he pressed his hand to a certain place, the wall would open for him. Codename Winter Soldier: acknowledged. Proceed.

Bucky hauled himself up the wall, metal fingers forcing crumbled handholds into the brick where none existed. Control would know he was here anyway soon enough. He'd hold off for as long as possible. Focus, he told himself. Focus on the mission.

It was the Winter Soldier who bent the spikes on top of the wall out of the way and dropped down softly into the tall grass on the other side.

No one had bothered doing anything to these gardens in a long time. Overgrown shrubbery tangled thick around the crooked trunks of untrimmed trees, and weeds fought with the remnants of rosebushes and overflowed the boundaries of choked flowerbeds. The grass was knee-high in places. Everything was growing furiously, lush and twisted, the deep green of late spring. Good cover, he thought dispassionately. He couldn't see any security cameras watching the driveway, but that didn't mean there were none.

He made his way up to the house slipping through the shadow jungle of the old garden. Branches reached for him like fingers. Big pink and purple flowers sat on some of the shrubs, bright spots of color in the gloom. The house was red brick, dirty-looking but grand, with lots of windows, most of them boarded over. He breathed deep. He went round the back.

The plants in what had been the kitchen garden gave off strong scents when he crushed them under his black boots. The unlocked kitchen door swung open silently at a touch. The kitchen was empty, dust hanging in the air. The hallway it gave onto was dark and musty-smelling, but it had high ceilings, hardwood floors; it had once been fancy. There were still no obvious cameras, and there should have been. Control needed cameras like humans needed eyes. He had a knife in his hand, ready and waiting. There was no sign that anyone had been there in decades. Drifts of cobwebs hung in the corners.

If this was the wrong place—

The shape of the room was familiar, down to the curved sweep of the stairway to the upper floors. His heart began to pound.

He had been here before. It had been white, then, all the walls had been white, and there had been nurses. He knew about the long corridors upstairs and the doors that locked. There had been patients. Undesirables, Hydra would have said; unfit; subhuman. For Control, a ready supply of test subjects. They had taken their time with the Winter Soldier apparatus. They had tested it thoroughly before they risked transporting their almost-supersoldier across the Atlantic from the Soviet facility. He was a valuable asset.

The place had obviously been empty for a long time now. But all his instincts were alert. This had been Control's domain; the heart of remaking. The Winter Soldier had returned here after the mission with the burned house, among a score of others, all of them early on. Proceed for debriefing and reset. Debriefing had always taken a long time. And then what did you do? And what did it make you feel? Nothing, nothing. A doctor in a white coat asking the questions. A rabbity little man with a SHIELD insignia on his lab coat watching greedily through the wire mesh. One time he'd snapped and killed the doctor, not really knowing why. Control had talked gently to him, disappointed. He'd let them reset him. The next time there'd been a new doctor.

This was how you turned people into things. This was the place. He felt—

—sick with fear—

—nothing, he told himself. Nothing.

Up or down? Up was test subjects. Down was the laboratories. Down was cameras, and metal, and Control.

Down.

A single light bulb, cracked and flickering, had been left on to illuminate the cellar stairs.

It was the first hint he'd seen that anything was still here. If he'd been letting himself feel anything, there would have been relief, maybe. Or terror.

He had to find Steve.

It was strange walking through the cellars of Pleasantview after Stark Tower. This facility had been a futurist’s dream in the 1950s, high-tech and glittering, clean and cold, boxed machines painted white with chrome fittings. Now it all looked... wrong. Childish, even. This wasn’t what the future had ended up looking like. Tony Stark would sneer at it. But everything was familiar, down to the patterns of the cracked linoleum tiles on the floor, and with the familiarity came a kind of vague horror. He kept seeing white out of the corner of his eye, flashes that weren’t there when he turned his head. White coats. Doctors. There were no doctors left here, but his memory was thronged with them. Not the faces, he didn’t look at their faces. White coats and shiny shoes. Everything brightly lit, gleaming.

He walked quietly past the gymnasium and the infirmary, cradling his assault rifle. There should be an attack. He was expecting an attack. There were lights. There was no other sign that anyone had been here, no Hydra strike team waiting for him, no androids on patrol. He still hadn’t spotted a single security camera, which was making him uneasy. It was possible that Control didn’t know he was here yet. It was possible, but he didn't believe it.

It was also possible, despite everything he thought he knew and remembered, that he was in completely the wrong place. If Steve wasn't here—

When he came to the end of the corridor and the double doors he didn’t let himself pause. He went straight on through.

And then he stopped.

The smell of earth was in the air. One corner of the cellar ceiling had collapsed, and there was a pile of mud and stone beneath it. Up above there was green overgrowth choking the gap. A tiny patch of sunlight had found its way through and was steadfastly lighting up one small faded patch of floor.

Where the chair should have been—and the machines and the generators, and the racks of files, the man-sized glass tank and the operating table, all of it—there was nothing. Only clear patches of floor, slightly less discolored than the rest, where the equipment had stood. All of it gone, and the smell of greenery in the air. He stayed very still, looking at the empty space. He was in the wrong place.

He should have moved at once. If this was the wrong facility then he had to try to find the right one; there wasn’t time to hang around. There was a mission. But he stood, and he stared. He lowered his rifle slowly, looking at the place where the chair had been. That had been the first one. All the wiring had still been on display; a scientist had been crouched over it, cursing as he corrected a tiny failure, when they brought him in. Control demanding final calculations from one of his underlings, not even looking at Bucky. He’d still known his name and rank and serial number, but he’d long since stopped repeating them. He’d stopped saying anything. Guards on either side, though he’d stopped trying to escape by then. They didn’t let him anywhere near anything he could use to escape the other way, after the only time he tried, and once he’d recovered from the attempt they’d hurt him and hurt him and hurt him, let him heal and hurt him again, until finally they could make him apologize, and then they’d put him on ice.

He’d been woken up intermittently after that, for tests, for interrogations that made no sense, for more pain. They'd moved him from facility to facility while he slept in ice; he remembered it, the dizzy disorientation, every time he woke up. Finally they'd shipped him back home in a box like a corpse and he'd had no idea. He'd been so close to where he'd begun, but to him Pleasantview had been one place among many. There'd been no way to understand it was the last. Not even when they brought him to the chair.

He hadn’t known, the first time, what was going to happen. He’d known every time after that; that was a memory they’d let him keep. But the first time. He hadn’t known. And they’d—brought in a girl, to speak to him kindly and ask him to sit down; she understood that things had been hard, she said, but they’d worked out how to help him now, and soon they’d let him go outside. Sit. That’s right. Close your eyes if you like. It’s all going to be okay.

It was what Steve didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he hadn’t known she was lying. He’d just given up. And Steve couldn’t understand, because Steve never would.

He didn’t notice the lights fading green at first. He was barely seeing anything at all.

"Welcome home, Winter Soldier," said Control behind him.

He spun on his heel and fired in the same movement. It was an android behind him, but not a realistic one. No one would ever mistake this thing for human. It was taller than him, eight feet high or so, and all metal, no synthetic skin. The head was nothing but a single camera lens, and there was a wide green screen set where its chest should be. Bucky’s bullets bounced off it, left threadline cracks in the screen. It rocked on its feet but didn't lose its balance.

Control’s face in bars of green light looked out at him from the screen. "I take it you have recovered some memory of this place," he said. "Are you glad of it?"

"Where are they," said Bucky.

"Who?"

"Don’t lie to me," Bucky said. "I know what you are. Where are they?"

"Your dear captain and his friends? Buried under the rubble in New Jersey, perhaps."

"No, they’re not," said Bucky.

Control grinned mirthlessly at him. "No, they’re not. How well you understand me. My dearest and best creation."

"Sounding a little sentimental there," Bucky said. "Is that normal for a machine? Isn’t that a weakness?"

Control’s face frowned at him. "This tendency towards bad manners, on the other hand, I have not missed."

"Tell me where they are."

"Why should I do that?" said Control. "Three tools for war, one of them a supersoldier. And the vibranium shield as well, which I have often wished to study. Truly a kindness of fortune to deliver such excellent experimental subjects into my hands. I knew it was only a matter of time before my giants were discovered. I believe I am insulted that your new masters thought them weak enough to send so few against them."

"Took ‘em out, didn’t they?" Bucky said, thinking fast. Control thought this was about the giant robots that Steve and the others had fought in Newark. They hadn’t even known about those. Control didn’t know what the mission had really been about. Control hadn’t mentioned Mnemosyne yet.

"An experiment, a mere bagatelle, and I chose to sacrifice them," Control was saying, "to acquire your replacements."

His replacements. Bucky felt—nothing. Not now. He couldn't afford to feel now. "You're going to let them go," he said.

"Do you seek to bargain with me?" There was a staccato rattle of mechanized laughter. "What do you offer me, Winter Soldier?"

Bucky swallowed. There was only one thing he had that Control had ever wanted.

"Me," he said. "You can have me."

"You?" said Control. "Only you? You think that is enough to trade for three? I am not so sentimental as that."

"Please."

"You have always been a valuable asset," said Control. "You have served Hydra very well. I have every intention of reacquiring you in the fullness of time; and sooner would certainly be better than later. I am not in the habit of bargaining with my tools, Winter Soldier. If you cease to fight me and return to your proper place—if you allow yourself to be repaired and reset, if you cease attempting to undo your ascension—then you may trade yourself for one of these people you have grown so pathetically attached to." He sneered the word attached. A weakness. "One of them, only."

Bucky immediately opened his mouth, didn’t even have to think about it though maybe he should, maybe Steve would have hesitated at a choice like that—

"And not Captain America," Control added. "Erskine’s work was fascinating, and shall be of use to me in the new world I intend to create. You are not worth so much as that."

Bucky was silent.

"Well?" said Control.

"You won’t do to Steve what you did to me," Bucky said. "He won’t let you."

"You truly believe that," said Control, "don’t you?"

"It’s true."

"You are mistaken," said Control. "Despite all Erskine’s best efforts, Captain America remains a mere human. And humans fail, Winter Soldier. Humans always fail. It is why we are superior, you and I."

"There’s no we," said Bucky.

Control just laughed at him again. "Accept my bargain, or not, Winter Soldier," he said. "Destroy this vessel of mine if you wish, and flee. I know you will submit in the end, but observe my generosity: today, the choice is yours."

He could run. He could head back to Stark Tower and try to work out where to go next; or just disappear, a thought that might have been tempting if he’d believed for a second he could get away from Control altogether that way. But the longer he waited the longer Control had Steve—and Steve wouldn’t fail, couldn’t fail, he refused to believe it, wasn’t gonna trust a word Control said—except that the words wouldn’t let him go. Something in the back of his mind was lingering uncomfortably over them, a doubt he didn’t want to listen to.

And he still didn’t know where Steve was.

He lowered his gun. "Fine," he said.

Control’s face on the cracked screen looked satisfied. "I thought as much. Say it, Winter Soldier."

"I accept," said Bucky. "I’ll take your bargain. Me for one of them."

"And which of them will it be?"

The sadistic son-of-a-bitch was enjoying this. He let the way he felt about making the decision show on his face. "Romanov," he got out. "The Black Widow."

"The woman, of course. How chivalrous of you. I shall be sorry to lose her, but I keep my word."

"I have to see her," Bucky said. "You have to prove to me it’s her you’re letting go, not one of your doubles. Then you can—reset me. I’ll let you. Once I’ve seen."

"An understandable precaution. Very well," said Control. The robot with the screen in its chest turned away from him. "Come along."

"Where—"

"Right here, of course," said Control. "In the main facility downstairs." He didn’t have to be able to see the face to know what expression was on it as the voice added, gentle as a whip, "Or did you not remember?"

Wide open spaces and blue strip-lighting. No cracked linoleum floors down here. American HQ had moved to DC early, and Research and Development had divided in two: half in the Camp Lehigh base, and half at Pleasantview. If one head was cut off, the other would live.

Bucky trailed Control’s robot body down the corridor, aware of all the eyes on him. There were people down here, and they knew who he was. Some of them carried weapons and stood and stared coldly; some of them only glanced up and looked unsurprised, and then went back to looking at tablet screens, ducking in and out of rooms with labels on the doors. HAZARD 1. HAZARD 2. COLD STORAGE. BIOMECHANICS. Everyone saluted Control’s android when it passed. Bucky reached for his belt and the robot detector there, then let his hand fall. He didn’t want Control to know he had it. He didn’t think all of them were androids. At least some of them had to be. It was hard to know for sure.

Control's robot led him up a curved staircase to a platform that looked out across the whole wide space. "Proceed," it said, at a door labeled OBSERVATION A.

It didn’t follow him in. It didn’t need to. Control was already in there, green face watching from a massive screen. The door slammed closed behind Bucky. Three white-coated scientists and four guards stood in the observation booth; one of the scientists looked up and then twitched dramatically when she saw the Winter Soldier behind her. "Ignore him," dictated Control’s voice over the speakers. "He is only here to observe. You shall see that I keep my promises, Winter Soldier."

Natasha’s pistols lay on a table to the side, along with the rest of her weapons. In a room on the other side of the one-way mirror the Black Widow, unarmed, was fighting herself. They were a blur, two precisely mirrored figures that moved with the same deadly speed and grace, hunting for weaknesses, showing no mercy.

"Unit 2460," boomed Control’s voice. "Stand down."

One of the two Natashas went still. The other one—the real one—immediately put some space between them, eyeing it suspiciously, still in a ready stance. "Agent Romanov," said Control’s voice. "We have decided to dispense with your services. Hydra will require nothing further of you."

"Really," Bucky heard Natasha say neutrally.

He eyed the seven people in the room. Two of the scientists were looking confused. One of them was the one who'd startled when she saw him. Those two, he thought, were human. And one of the guards. It could have been better odds. He wasn't going to wait to see how Control meant to double-cross him. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it would happen.

He slammed his metal fist backwards into the screen—smash, glass shattering across the floor—and drew a knife across the throat of the nearest human, the guard. Blood spurted in a wide arc. The other two humans went down in two shots, easy; that simplified things. The androids turned towards him as one. Bucky was ready for them. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He threw himself under the spray of bullets and slammed his metal fist through the door to the observation room, ripping out the lock.

It swung open. The androids were converging on him now, but his blood was singing; this felt good, felt right, this was what he was made for. All he had to do was destroy. He grabbed the nearest one and dragged it against him as a shield; the others peppered it with bullets before they adjusted, and now there were three instead of four, and Bucky had an extra gun. Two of them leapt on him at once; he wrenched the head off one that was incautious enough to get in range of the arm, and then shot the other one four times in the head and three in the chest, enough to take out all the power sources. It went still. The headless one came at him again but Bucky was grinning madly to himself now; he put his fist through its chest and dragged out a handful of wires and twisted, and it went down. That left the third scientist.

Six shots behind him. The remaining android collapsed—not a combat model. Bucky turned.

Natasha raised her eyebrows at him. She’d reclaimed her pistols.

Bucky said nothing, just reached for the robot detector at his belt and threw. Natasha caught it, eyebrows raised, fingers closing tight. The light turned blue and it beeped. She tilted her head at the observation room. The remains of her doppelganger were scattered in pieces across the floor. Not large pieces. She’d used a grenade. "You seemed to have things under control. I thought I’d get rid of her first."

Bucky nodded. "You're okay?" he remembered to say.

Natasha snorted. "Fine." She was gathering up the rest of her equipment from the table, strapping weapons back into place. "Oh look, they kept my necklace. I was worried they’d throw it out." She held up a silver chain with an arrow on it. Bucky frowned at it. There was a pendant hanging next to the arrow, marked with a familiar curving logo that had been all over the place in the Tower. Stark Industries. "It’s got a lot of personal significance," Natasha said. She smiled at him, a tight, mean little smile. She threw his robot detector back to him in a move that looked casual.

Bucky knew it wasn't. He held onto it long enough that she could see it flash amber, then blue, and beep. Then it went back in his belt.

"And now?" she said.

He thought about the sign saying COLD STORAGE outside, and what he remembered from Chicago. "There’s maybe an army of robots out there," he said.

"Then why isn’t the army of robots already coming for us in here?"

He shrugged. "One way to find out."

Natasha nodded.

The minute they were out of the door something barreled into Bucky and knocked him over. He snarled, a knife already in his hand, and then Sam said, "Natasha, get down!"

Bullets whistled through the space where they’d both been standing.

Sam looked down at Bucky under him and said, "There's snipers set up on the far side of the room. Man, am I glad to see you."

Bucky stared at him and said the first thing that came into his head. "Bet that’s not something you ever thought you’d say."

"Life’s just full of surprises lately," said Sam, and rolled off him. "Listen, there’s—"

"An army of robots?" said Natasha.

"How did you guess?"

"It’s been a theme lately!"

"No way can we fight them all," said Sam. "I thought the big ones were bad, but at least there were only a few of them. Where’s Steve?"

"He’s not with you?" said Bucky, heart sinking.

"They had me on my own fighting another me." Sam jerked his head at a door that was hanging open nearby. OBSERVATION B. "I dunno if it's just me or if these robots aren't as good as some we've seen, but I saw a chance to get out of there and I took it. You haven’t seen him?"

"We’re finding him," said Bucky. That was—

—the only thing that—

—the mission.

"He's gotta be here somewhere," Sam said. "We—" a bullet whistled over his head and he hissed and pressed himself flatter to the ground, "—might need to deal with the sniper problem first!"

Bucky nodded. He had a sniper rifle too. He slung it off his back. Nothing else Control had was as good as him. "I can get rid of them. Get ready to move. We're finding him."

"Allow me," said the voice of Control, ringing huge over the speakers around the cavernous space, "to save you some time."

Then there were no more bullets.

In the quiet that followed, the heavy tread of the outsized android sounded loud. It ascended the stairs towards them with insulting confidence. The face carried on the screen on its chest was smiling. The fucking thing was always smiling.

"You should have stuck to our bargain, Winter Soldier," it said to Bucky. "Now you are forcing my hand. You have a sincere attachment to your Captain, do you not?"

The screen flickered; the face vanished and was replaced by a soundless recorded image. Bucky watched himself strain against the straps of the chair, press his mouth to the lips of a thing that looked like Steve. He’d forgotten—he hadn’t let himself think—that Control would know about that. Of course Control would know. "Perverse, but sincere," said the android, as the image played. Bucky looked away, humiliated.

He saw that Natasha had gone white.

"Perhaps I might have kept the supersoldier prisoner. But I will certainly not risk an escape. You could not suppose that I would ever allow any part of Erskine’s creation to slip out of my control," Control said. "I, who was privileged," almost spitting it, if a machine could spit, "to know the Red Skull."

Natasha had gone white, Bucky thought, and his brain was working hideously, achingly slowly, so it took him too many long, long seconds to work out why.

"You don’t have to do this," she said.

"I required blood and tissue samples," said Control, "not a soldier who has never known how to follow orders. Such a soldier is of no use to anyone."

"You don’t have to do this—"

"It is already done."

The image on the screen changed. Now it showed Steve restrained against a wall, metal holding him at his ankles, thighs, waist, shoulders, wrists; he looked mad about it, was saying something. The stubborn set of his jaw was achingly familiar. Bucky could almost hear his voice, untiring, defiant. He looked pretty beaten up but the bruises were already healing. He was alive. He was fine.

Bucky's stupid slow brain was still hanging onto that, not ready, when an android which was a twin to the one in front of them right now calmly walked into the image and shot Steve: four times in the stomach, and then twice in the head.

It was fast. There was no sound in the image. Steve slumped immediately in the restraints, head lolling forward.

Then the bloodstains began to spread.

Sam was the only one of them who made a sound: a low, raw, animal noise, like he’d been punched in the stomach.

Bucky stood up.

There was a roaring sound in his ears. It quickly rose to a familiar shriek, like he was falling. There were still snipers on the far side of the room. He knew it, the part of him that never stopped registering threat and risk was fully aware, but he didn’t care. Maybe one of them would shoot him in the head. That would be good. He was vaguely aware of Control speaking, and he heard Natasha say urgently, "Don’t listen to him—James, focus on my voice, don’t listen—" but neither of those things meant anything to him.

He couldn't stop seeing it. The bloodstains. Red on blue, darkening Steve's uniform. It could be a—

—it could be a trick—

"But they don't bleed," he said.

Natasha stopped trying to talk to him.

Now all of them were just looking at him. Control too, the smiling green face back on the screen. All of them looking at him like they were waiting for something. Like they knew what came next.

He didn't know what came next.

What would he do? Nothing, maybe. Stand here and wait until something happened to him. If Steve was gone there was no point to anything else. If Steve was gone there was nothing left of him, there was no proof, there was no one worth putting back together out of the pieces he’d rescued from the dark. He could try the other way, he thought vaguely; the Winter Soldier could take orders from Fury as well as anyone. But he knew as he thought it that it wouldn’t work. The Winter Soldier was gone, had chosen a final mission and died in the choosing, months ago now, maybe even the instant he’d dived from the falling helicarrier into the river after a man he should have killed. And the old Bucky Barnes had died long before that: if not when he fell from a train, if not over those long years of alternating agony and ice, then he’d died for good on the day he’d let himself sit quietly down and open his mouth for the guard, just for the sake of having someone speak kindly to him again and tell him it would be all right.

What was left of him now was neither of them, was the wasteland left over when both of them had been torn to shreds. What was left of him was someone who’d chosen Steve, and that was all. There was no way forward, without that. There was nothing to hold onto without that.

"—your fault, Winter Soldier," Control crooned. Someone was touching him. It was Sam. Brave of him, Bucky thought, to be standing up. There were tears on Sam's face but he was talking gently and urgently; his grip on Bucky’s bicep was firm. Bucky couldn’t hear a word he was saying. He shook off the comforting hand. He looked at Control, and Control looked back at him.

"You do not have to feel this," Control said. "It is only your sentimental attachment which is clouding your thoughts. You are suffering now, but you can forget at any time. That has always been my gift to you."

Sam and Natasha both spoke at once, and Bucky ignored them both.

Forget this. Not feel this.

"Yes," he said.

He was expecting Natasha to attack him as soon as he spoke. She was unsentimental, she wouldn’t waste time. He ducked her first blow but missed the instant when she went to trip him. They crashed to the floor together. Sam was still talking. Bucky punched Natasha in the face; her head snapped to the side and she started bleeding from the corner of her mouth.

That was when Sam jumped him too. That was also to be expected.

Bucky fought the same way he always fought, vicious, precise, unstoppable. He felt like he was watching himself do it, watching the two of them try and fail to take him down while Control looked on benignly from his little screen. Nothing felt real until the moment he got his hands around Natasha’s throat. His metal fingers caught on the arrow necklace. He twisted and tugged. The chain snapped and the necklace fell into his hand. Personal significance, she'd said.

It was significant enough to make her go still for a split second. He used the instant to throw her off him, several feet into a wall. He stood up. Sam came at him again and Bucky caught him, grappled with him for a second or two, and then kneed him hard in the stomach. While he was winded Bucky put his metal hand on the rail at the edge of the platform and jumped down to the big open floor below. He hit the ground hard, felt the jolt right through his knees. When he straightened up another android with Control's face in its chest was there.

"Will you leave a battle unfinished, Winter Soldier?" the face demanded.

Bucky looked at it blankly. "What have you got a robot army for?"

There was a pause.

The green face inclined itself gravely, nodding without a neck. "Very well. You may proceed for reset. Through those doors." A metallic arm extended and pointed to an unlabelled doorway. "From there you will find that you know the way. Your relief waits for you."

The chair, he meant. The chair.

Android guards lined the long corridor. There were too many of them to take on alone. This time Control was taking no chances with him. He didn’t need to worry. Bucky wasn’t going to try to fight them. Not now.

He thought about spreading bloodstains. He could not stop himself from thinking about it. His mind played the picture again and again. The defiant set of Steve's jaw. The way his body had jerked gracelessly at the repeated impact of the bullets. The bloodstains.

He wanted more than anything to stop thinking. To stop feeling. His mind would not obey him.

The chair could take it away.

The tunnel sloped down. This facility went very deep. The doorway he came to at last was labeled CONTROL: MASTER. Androids blocked his progress, unmoving. He understood why. He started removing his weapons. Guns, knives, grenades, ammunition; a pile on the floor. The androids kept blocking the door, saying nothing. He looked at them. They looked like people. The eyes of the nearest one flashed green.

"Prepare yourself," it said.

He nodded. He took off the jacket, and the tac vest, and the black shirt underneath. He still had the ripped Iron Man t-shirt from Stark Tower underneath that. He took it off as well and added it to the pile. He crouched to take off his boots. The air in the underground corridor was chill against his bare skin. He always went to the chair half-naked.

He thought of nothing, now. (The bloodstains—)

No. He thought of nothing. He was nothing. Or would be, soon enough.

The androids stood aside when he was done. The doors swung open for him. He was starting to shiver; he could feel the shudders running through him. It wasn’t just the cold.

The room was set up so the chair was the first thing you saw when you walked in. It was on a pedestal, like a throne. All its fittings were polished, and they gleamed very faintly in the dim green light from the bank of screens behind it. Servers lined the other walls; there was a faint hum in the cool air.

Bucky turned his head. There was Steve's shield, lying on a table. Waiting to be studied. Control had said he wanted to study it. The bright colors looked faded in the gloom. The screens behind it weren't showing Control's face. They were showing Steve.

Bucky tried to make himself look away and could not. The body still hung in its restraints, slumped forward, head hanging. The bloodstains were darkening from red to something near-black. The image was larger than life. It was impossible to ignore; and Control did not want him to ignore it. There was no reason for him to have it there, unless to remind him. Steve, who was good. Who had thought he was worth saving. Who had made him want to be worth saving.

Steve, who was dead.

"My condolences," said Control. "Soon it will not matter. You may proceed, Winter Soldier."

There were people in the room, Bucky was vaguely aware. A couple of nervous technicians there to strap him in. And guards, lots of them. They looked nervous too, so maybe they were human. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He closed his eyes, turned his face away from the digital tableau, and opened them again. Now he did not have to see. He could forget forever. The Winter Soldier did not know pain, or fear, or sorrow. The Winter Soldier never failed, or never had to remember failing.

He advanced towards the chair.

At the base of the pedestal, he stopped.

"You may proceed," said Control. He sounded...impatient. Greedy.

Bucky stood where he was. He turned and looked up at the screens, made himself look. He’d have liked to be there, wherever it was, somewhere further in, deep underground. He'd've liked to lift Steve’s head up. To see his face. To get him out of the restraints and lay him flat, give him back his dignity.

He looked. And then he looked away. There was one of Control's camera-headed androids standing by the table with the shield on it. It had the eager-looking face on its chest, matching the massive hateful green mask of a person on the walls. It made him think of something he’d seen somewhere once.

Oz, the great and powerful.

That was it.

Bucky turned away from the chair.

"What do you think you’re doing?" said Zola.

And he was Zola, he was fucking Arnim Zola, not Control; he was a Nazi scientist who’d worked for the Red Skull, he’d been the target of Bucky Barnes’ final mission, and he was a sniveling little piece of shit. Bucky hung onto that grimly as Zola spat a word that he knew was meant to bring on the pain triggers. He hung onto it and though he shuddered, though the memory of agony rose up through him in a wave, he wasn’t afraid of a little pain. He wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. There was nothing that could happen to him that would make the slightest bit of difference.

He broke into a run, and then there was the table, Steve’s shield, which was a weapon just lying around unattended; it took a strong arm to throw and catch this thing, a good eye to judge the angles, but he had both of those. His metal fingers closed around the rim and then he was slamming it up into the android's neck joints, and the edge sheared straight through metal and took the camera-head off. The thing flailed at him uselessly; it was big but its reactions were slower than his. Not a threat. The guards were cautiously advancing in response to Zola’s screeches. Bucky ignored them. He wouldn’t stop to fight pointless battles.

He knew who his enemy was.

He made straight for the grand humming banks of machinery that lined the walls. The shield was on his metal arm like it fit there. His other hand dropped to his belt and came back with Natasha’s broken necklace and the Stark Industries pendant that wasn’t a pendant at all; he slammed it against the nearest massive server and the little metal disc stuck there.

There was a very faint chiming sound. The disk began to glow blue.

The doors that led back to the sloping tunnel and the facility where he'd left Sam and Natasha were sliding open now, and the androids from the corridor were pouring through. The human guards still hung back, obviously wanting nothing to do with a battle against the Winter Soldier if they could help it. Bucky hefted the shield and watched the robots coming for him. He was probably going to die. Good. Good. He could die with Steve’s shield on his arm. Maybe he could even die as someone who deserved to carry it. That wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. He stood there, waiting for the guards and the androids both, caring about nothing else.

Mnemosyne chimed again behind him.

"How dare you!" screeched Zola. "How dare—"

And the voice stopped.

One by one, the wall of sick green screens blanked out.

One by one they lit up again in clear bright blue.

Slowly at first, and then with gathering speed, blue threads of lights appeared under the advancing robots’ skins. They started to stumble and fall as they came towards him. Bucky watched them advance feeling faintly hysterical, wasted adrenalin pumping through him. A second ago these things had been an army of nightmares, and now they were a slapstick routine. They tripped over each other. They walked in circles. They fell face first to the ground, and didn’t get up again.

When the last of them collapsed in a stupid twitching heap a voice spoke out of Zola’s speakers that wasn't Zola’s voice. "Initial deletion protocol completed," it said, in sweet alto tones. "Engaging pursuit routines across all network connections. The hunt is on."

Bucky looked for the guards and the technicians. They were fleeing towards an exit on the far side of the room. They knew what the Winter Soldier was capable of, all right. The room was quiet without them. The blue light of Mnemosyne still shone from the screens, lighting up the chair and the empty space. The image of Steve hanging in the restraints was gone.

The scattered bodies on the floor were still and empty and had never been people to begin with. He kicked them out of the way as he walked the way the fleeing guards had gone. He was still carrying the shield as he went deeper into the underground. Into the tunneling dark.

These corridors he did not know at all. Either he had never seen them before, or his mind could not find them among the scraps of his past. He walked at random. The blue strip lighting flickered on and off. Once or twice he came back to an intersection he had seen before and realized he had gone in a circle.

He saw Hydra agents. Most of them fled when they spotted him. He could have run after them and killed them, or thrown the shield, but it did not seem worth the effort. Once a group of three, a woman and two men, did not run. The woman had a pin on her black collar, the many-armed Hydra badge, and cold eyes. She glared at him as one might glare at a malfunctioning machine or a recalcitrant animal. "You are in direct violation of orders," she said. "Stand down immediately."

Bucky snapped her neck without thinking very much about it and threw her body aside. He looked at the two men. They were cowering. They seemed too scared to run. One of them, pale and sweaty, looked at Steve's shield on Bucky's metal arm, worked his jaw a few times and said, "Listen, we—we're sorry, all right, it wasn't us, we didn't know about you—"

Bucky looked at him for a moment. Then he killed him too.

The other man finally broke and started running. Bucky kept walking down the corridor in the direction he had gone. If he caught up with the man again he would kill him. Otherwise he didn't care. He could not care. What use was vengeance? What comfort was there in killing? If painting the walls red with Hydra's blood could have given him Steve, he would have already done it. Bucky Barnes would have matched his grief with cold rage, and the Winter Soldier was a thing made for slaughter; but neither of them meant anything now.

He walked. The lights flickered. Humans in Hydra blacks glimpsed him down corridors and ran for their lives. They thought the nightmare they'd made had come back for them. As if they mattered.

Now he let himself think about Steve. Tiny flickers from the old days; a boy with a black eye, a young man with a stubborn look—so little, still. And more precious even than those brief golden glimpses of memory were things that were ugly but were his, truly his. There was Steve on the helicarrier on Project Insight, calling out to him, speaking directly to him as if he could not believe for a second that Bucky was not a person who could listen. Steve casting aside the shield and choosing not to hurt him, Steve—Steve, who never backed down—choosing to stop fighting rather than hurt him. Steve's face when he'd beaten it bloody, slack in unconsciousness on the riverbank.

Afterwards: Steve's arms coming around him, when the Winter Soldier had come to him. Steve's laughter and his friendship; his bright eyes, his warm fingers hesitant on Bucky's arm. Steve's bottomless generosity to the shell he'd become, how he'd poured out his history and his humanity as if of course both of those things were Bucky's too by right. As if there could never be any doubt.

He wiped the wetness off his face. The Winter Soldier did not feel and did not fail. Well, it was months since he'd really been the Winter Soldier, and he'd failed all right, and he'd feel if he wanted to. Steve, god, the best damn thing that had ever happened to him, the best decision Bucky Barnes had ever made. He'd kissed Steve and he'd expected—he could admit it to himself now—he'd expected no, said kindly because it was Steve, but there were limits, surely, to what anyone could give. What anyone could ever want to give to something like him. Or else he'd maybe been thinking of the way Steve touched him sometimes and hoping to—to steal something that belonged to the man he'd once been (did I ever—no, you never did.)

Instead Steve said, he said: only if you want to. Because he thought what Bucky wanted mattered. He said: you don't have to be whatever you think I want. He said: you already are.

Bucky knew, as well as he knew his own name, that Steve didn't tell lies.

And Zola had thought he would be better off if he didn't hurt.

He'd take this hurt over the cold any day. He'd take the head full of horrors and the knowledge of what Steve had seen in him and be glad of it. That was his choice and no one else's. He settled the shield more firmly on his arm. He'd set out from the Tower to face the thing he feared most and find Steve; and he'd done the first half of it, and even though it was too late, he was still going to find Steve.

He kept walking.

Sometimes he passed a broken-down android, slumped against the wall or lying on the floor. He stepped over them and otherwise ignored them. He kept seeing the same Hydra agents again and again, always scurrying ahead of him further into the tunnels. He was blocking their escape route, he realized eventually; none of them dared try to get out if it meant going past him. They thought the Winter Soldier was hunting them. But Steve would be down here somewhere. He'd be a long way from the surface, from anything; Zola was a coward who feared Steve the way he'd feared the Red Skull, and he would have buried him deep.

He passed through rooms labeled STORAGE and ASSEMBLY. In one of them he saw rows of human legs stored neatly on racks, sorted by size and gender and skin tone, each ending in a metal socket. Another room contained arms, another torsos; a fourth had metal skulls on shelves that went floor to ceiling, each one eyeless, not yet covered by synthetic skin. They made him remember the body he'd seen Zola wearing in Chicago. A room labeled INFILTRATION had an android on a stand that first appeared as a deformed shadow in the dim blue light; a winged man, wearing Sam's face. Bucky went closer. He thought about how angry Steve had been when they'd fought the replacement Sam before. He took the winged android down from its stand and systematically smashed it, trying not to look at its face.

He looked around INFILTRATION some more. Glass tanks against the walls turned out to contain a Natasha, a Pepper Potts, and two of him. Bucky couldn't figure out how to activate the self-destruct. He decided this was a distraction. He would come back later, maybe, and break them all by hand. Or maybe not.

He walked on, leaving the familiar faces behind him staring out through the glass into the dark.

It was not long afterwards that he found the place.

It was a bigger room than it had seemed on Zola's screens, which had focused tightly on what he wanted Bucky to see. There was wire mesh stretched across metal bars splitting the space in two, like one half was a cage. There was a broken-down camera-headed android collapsed inside, one of Zola's bodies. It still held a gun.

Bucky’s eyes slid sideways past it, to the still figure still hanging in its restraints against the wall. The dark bloodstains.

For a moment he had to close his eyes.

Then he ripped aside the wire mesh, the metal bars. He went right to where Steve was hanging, and he touched Steve’s face with his right hand, lifted it so he could see. He tried not to look at the bloody bullet hole; he didn't want that to be his memory. Then he ripped the restraints out of the wall with his metal hand, caught the body against him; he slid to the floor with Steve’s head in his lap and the shield by his side. He put his human hand in Steve’s hair, which was soft.

He’d been fighting right to the end. He’d never failed. Zola had been wrong about that.

It wasn’t any sort of comfort to think it. There wasn’t any comfort left in the world. Just a yawning space. And Bucky knew—he knew he was going to have to live with it, that space. Because there wasn’t an army here to go down fighting against, Mnemosyne had seen to that. A handful of terrified Hydra agents weren't going to be enough to kill him now. So he was going to keep being alive. And he was going to keep being something that wasn’t Bucky Barnes and wasn’t the Winter Soldier. He was going to have to make that person a man worth being. He’d picked up Captain America’s shield; and a man who took that up couldn’t be someone who gave up after. He had no right.

He was going to have to find a way.

He kept stroking Steve’s hair. There were going to be tears later, he thought. He was going to weep over this moment, come back to it again and again and break his heart for it. But he wasn’t crying now. He felt curiously calm, and he had no intention of moving for a good long while. Someone would come looking for him eventually, and when they did, he’d move. Until then he’d stay here, saying goodbye.

He heard movement eventually, and looked up.

If he’d been expecting anything, he would have expected a Hydra operative. Or maybe Sam.

It was neither.

He felt a moment of blazing red rage when he saw the thing coming towards him. It was a violation. It was sick. And if they thought they could get to Bucky now by shoving something that looked like Steve in his face, if they thought that anything now could shake him at all—

And then his goddamn brain kicked in and reminded him that Zola wasn’t here and the whole facility was littered with the dead remains of his android doubles. Hope was a sick lurch in his stomach, hope was caught in the back of his throat and tasting like bile—blood and tissue samples, Zola had said, and he liked his mind games; and of course he wouldn’t pass up the chance to control a real supersoldier, of course not—Bucky fumbled for the detector, the last bit of kit he had on him. He did the same thing he’d done to Natasha, he threw—

and it was caught.

The light came on: amber, amber, amber—

Blue. And a cheerful little beep.

"Steve," said Bucky, scrambling to his feet. He brought the shield with him because he’d forgotten to let it go. The android—the lie—was a meaningless pile at his feet.

Steve looked at him strangely. He wasn’t in his uniform; Zola had given it to the double, of course. He was wearing Hydra blacks. Maybe that was what he could find.

He said, "Who the hell is Steve?"

Bucky stared at him.

No, he thought, flat denial. It couldn’t be. Not Steve.

"Not funny, Steve," he said.

Steve narrowed his eyes and didn’t answer him. Something in Bucky’s head was wailing that it wasn’t possible. Not Steve. Steve wasn’t him; this couldn’t happen.

The rest of him was paying attention. Steve had a knife. Who the hell had given him a knife? Some Hydra moron not thinking straight; Steve wasn’t Bucky, and knives weren’t his weapon of choice. His body didn’t know them properly. His grip was slightly wrong. But he could do Bucky some damage anyway, if—no, Bucky was thinking, no, not going to happen, but the Winter Soldier was already calculating. Steve was strong and fast and almost impossible to incapacitate. Either you killed him or he kept coming. No one knew that better than Bucky did.

But he hadn’t attacked yet.

Bucky thought of the Hydra agents fleeing ahead of him into the facility. Not just running away from him. Running towards something. A weapon they thought might be able to stop him. "What did they say to you, Steve?" he said, trying to keep his voice steady and soft.

"I have a mission," said Steve after a moment. His eyes flicked down to his own double and then back to Bucky’s face, and Bucky thought—hoped—that he saw confusion there, and curiosity. Zola hadn’t possessed his captives very long. This couldn’t be the slow, steady, systematic thing they’d done to the Winter Soldier. There hadn’t been time. This couldn’t be anything other than a rush job. Besides, Steve had answered him, and he knew better than anyone that the asset wasn’t supposed to get chatty.

"Yeah?" he said. "What’s your mission?"

Steve didn’t say anything.

"Clear the base?" Bucky guessed. "Make them an escape route?" He risked stepping closer. "Come on, Steve."

"You keep calling me that," said Steve.

"It’s your name." He licked his lips. "Steven Grant Rogers. That’s your name. They give you another one?"

"No," said Steve, and then, "I don’t—I don’t remember. I don’t think I have a—"

He stopped.

"Everyone’s got a name, Steve," said Bucky.

Steve glared at him. Bucky knew that glare. "Stop it."

"No," Bucky said.

"Stop it." Steve lifted the knife, a threat.

"I’m not gonna," said Bucky. "You didn’t stop when it was me."

"You," said Steve. "My mission is you."

"I figured," said Bucky. "But I’m your friend, Steve. You don’t have to do this. I don’t think you want to." He took another step closer and reached slowly for the knife. "Come on."

Steve backed sharply away. "If you’re my friend, why don’t I know you?" he said. "You’re lying."

Bucky held up his hands. "It’s me, Bucky. You do know me. You know me like I know you, Steve. We’ve been friends since we were kids."

"I don’t know you," said Steve again, and it felt like being stabbed for a second, before Bucky reminded himself that it wasn’t fucking true.

"You do," he said. "Trust me, you do."

Steve looked pale and strained, and then his jaw set and he said, "They told me not to listen to you."

Bucky was still scrabbling for the next thing to say when he attacked.

It was pure cold instinct on Bucky’s part that brought the metal arm up to stop the knife as it came down towards him. He’d forgotten again that he was holding the shield; the blade skittered off the painted vibranium surface and he could tell Steve had jarred his wrist with the bad angle against a surface that wouldn’t give. Steve snarled and came at him again, still with the knife. Steve in his right mind would have dropped it by now, he didn’t need it, he was plenty deadly with just his fists, but Bucky remembered being handed weapons and using them simply because they happened to be there. He blocked again, thinking fast. He was still barefoot and shirtless, ready for the chair; he didn’t have anything but the arm and the shield in his favor, and he was pretty sure that if he tried one of Steve’s fancy throwing moves with the shield Steve would simply catch it and then he’d really be fucked.

Hydra knew what the Winter Soldier could do. They'd been counting on Captain America being better. Bucky gave ground before Steve’s fast attacks, dodging and blocking and dodging again, stepping back and back until he was almost against the wall. He didn't know what else to do. How did you fight someone without hurting them?

It wasn’t something he’d ever needed to know.

Next time Steve came in close he didn’t try to dodge, took the hammer of Steve’s left hook right on the jaw and didn’t let the sudden glow of pain and dizziness stop him from putting all his weight behind the shield and pushing. The thing doubled as a ram easy enough, and now it was Steve who was stumbling back a pace or two, far enough that Bucky could snake an ankle around to trip him and force him down. They rolled together and the shield slipped off Bucky’s arm and skittered across the floor. "What the hell kind of weapon is that thing?" demanded Steve above him.

"Always wanted to ask you that," Bucky got out. He grabbed Steve’s wrist and tried to twist, get the knife off him. Bucky could use a knife all right, if he had to. "It seems to work for you."

He saw the dubious look flash across Steve’s face, and the way his gaze slipped away from Bucky for a second. He thought he knew that look, though he’d never seen Steve wear it. He knew it from himself. He used the moment to twist Steve's wrist and slam his hand against the ground.

"Drop the knife," he panted, "come on, drop it—"

Exactly the wrong thing to say, he realized at once.

Steve’s eyes snapped back to his face, and his expression went stubborn. Not remembering didn’t make him any less Steve Rogers, which meant—Bucky twisted out from underneath him seconds before the knife came round in an arc that should have slashed across his throat. It left a shallow cut along his collarbone instead, and there was a ringing sound when it hit the metal of his shoulder. "Steve, please," Bucky said. "You’ve got to listen to me—you’ll hate yourself for this, you’ve got to stop."

"Save your breath," said Steve. Bucky reached for the knife again, got his metal hand around the blade and held on, because at least that way Steve couldn’t stab him with it. Steve growled and his other hand went round Bucky’s throat, and Bucky—

could see a way to win this fight, for a given value of winning.

His mind was playing through the moves already. He could force Steve’s arm back far enough to dislocate his shoulder, and the pain would make Steve stop choking him long enough for Bucky to move, and then—the rest of it was there in his mind like a picture, Steve falling backwards, not ready, Bucky could snatch the knife and then—

But that didn’t matter at all, because if he hadn’t been able to do it two months ago when he hadn’t known his own name, he could never do it now.

He stopped struggling, went limp under Steve, and that surprised Steve enough that he hesitated for a second. His grip on Bucky’s throat went soft. Bucky hadn’t been expecting that but he wasn’t going to waste it. He surged up and flipped them over, pressed Steve down with all his weight on him and the metal hand still gripping the blade of the knife, and then he didn’t know what else to do, so he kissed him.

Steve’s body was a long tense line beneath him, and his mouth was hard and stubborn under Bucky’s, and Bucky didn’t have any idea what he was doing. "You know me," he breathed against Steve’s lips. "I know you and you know me."

It was like—like before, when he’d let himself go to the chair, and he’d kissed Steve and Steve hadn’t reacted. Except that hadn’t been Steve, and this was, this was.

Bucky let go of the blade and closed his eyes and kissed him again. Steve could stab him now, if he wanted. Bucky prayed to God he wouldn’t, but this was Steve, and he couldn’t win this without hurting him, and he wasn’t gonna hurt him.

He felt Steve’s body shift, and then the hand that wasn’t holding the knife came up and touched Bucky’s hair. Steve’s lips parted a little under his, soft.

Bucky let out a breath that wasn’t a sob and broke away. He looked down at Steve’s face. There was a familiar wrinkle of uncertainty between Steve’s eyebrows. He blinked a few times and bit his lip hard. He looked up at Bucky like he didn’t know what he was seeing. Like he wanted to.

Finally, sounding very small, sounding lost, he said, "Bucky?"

Bucky felt like his heart had turned over inside him. He got off Steve and held out his hands, palms up, empty, no threat. "Yeah, it’s me. Steve, it’s me. You know me. I’m not gonna hurt you."

Steve sat up slowly, staring at him. There was quiet for a long moment, and then his eyes slowly went big and horrified. "I was..." he whispered, and he looked at the knife he was still holding and dropped it like it burned. His face was starting to twist up into an awful expression. "Oh god," he said. "Bucky. Oh god."

"Hey, no, none of that," Bucky said. "You’re fine. Everything’s fine."

"I could have—"

"It’s fine. Steve. I’m fine. You’re okay."

Steve scrambled onto his knees and then dragged him into a crushing embrace. His arms were tight around Bucky and his face was buried in the side of Bucky’s neck. Bucky carefully put his arms around Steve in return, and then held him tighter. He could feel Steve shaking. "You’re okay," he said again. "Steve. Steve. I got you." He turned his head and pressed his face against Steve’s hair. He could feel the warmth of Steve’s too-hot body everywhere, he could smell him. He was real. "I got you," he said. "I’m here. You’re okay, you’re fine." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead."

Steve made a wet noise that could just about have been a laugh against his throat and didn’t move. "That’s usually my line," he said, muffled. "Bucky—"

"Makes a change, don’t it," Bucky said. He stroked Steve’s back carefully. "No, shh, don’t start crying on me, Steve. Stevie. You’re fine."

Steve’s fingers curled tight where his arms were wrapped around him. Bucky could feel the pressure of his fingertips on the metal arm; he could feel their warmth on his good side. "’m not crying. Don't call me Stevie," he said.

"Sure you’re not," Bucky said, and found he was smiling against Steve’s hair. Steve—

—had been beaten half to death by a couple of kids who’d taken exception to his face when they were eleven or so. There’d been blood and Bucky had been scared out of his mind, and Steve’d had tear tracks down his face along with the dirt and the blood, but he’d gotten up on his own feet and hardly let Bucky support him even though he’d needed it. He’d said it then too, stubborn as hell. I’m not crying. And Bucky had only been thinking about getting him somewhere safe to patch him up without Steve’s ma or his realizing they’d been in a dust-up again, and so he’d just said, sure, Steve, sure you’re not, tugging him along with a hand under his elbow—

He remembered it clear as day.

"—grinning about?"

"That time you got into it with—those two redheaded kids at school, remember?" Bucky said, even though he hadn’t heard half the question. "And you weren’t crying then either."

"Shut up," said Steve, sounding embarrassed. He pulled away from Bucky a little, enough that they could see each other’s faces. "You remember that?"

"I remember your face with two black eyes," Bucky said. "Unforgettable."

Steve ducked his head, laughed quietly. "Bucky."

"Come back here," Bucky said, and didn’t wait for Steve to move, just dragged him back in. "God, Steve." He felt like his heart would pound out of his chest. He hadn't been ready for this. He hadn't been ready for any of it.

"Do I ask what happened to your clothes?" said Steve after a moment, still holding on tight.

"Took ‘em off."

"I can see that," said Steve, but his grip on Bucky tightened. His hands were hot against Bucky’s bare back. One of them slid up to the back of Bucky’s neck and curved around it, and Bucky closed his eyes again to feel it better. "Okay, I’m not asking."

"It was a cunning plan," Bucky told him. His human hand had found its way to Steve’s waist, where it fit nicely. "I needed an in. You missed a thing or two while you were out."

Steve said, "Zola—"

"Got him," said Bucky with satisfaction.

"You—"

This whole place had been under Zola's networked eyes. Bucky raised his voice. "Hey, Mnemosyne. How’s it going?"

"Pursuit continues," answered a sweet alto voice out of speakers in the walls. Steve startled and looked around. "Target on the run. Estimated deletion at seventy percent."

"Got him," Bucky said again.

Steve started to smile. "Sam and Natasha?"

"I, uh, left them with a robot army to fight," Bucky said. "But they should be fine. They’re pretty good."

Steve stared at him, and then laughed. "Yeah, they are. But we’d better go and help."

"Yeah," said Bucky, though he would happily have stayed right where he was, holding onto Steve—who was safe, who was alive—forever. He knew better than to think Steve would ever stay safe in one place long, though. He needed someone watching his back. Several people, preferably, but Bucky was always gonna be one of them.

Steve picked up his shield. After a moment's hesitation, he offered it to Bucky. Bucky shook his head. "There's still a few Hydra operatives down here," he said. "Anyway, it's yours."

The remnants of Hydra stayed well out of their way, though. Steve and Bucky went at a jog back up through the winding maze of tunnels to the room called CONTROL: MASTER where the chair stood like a throne. There they saw Sam and Natasha burst through the doors from the main facility under Pleasantview. Sam was in the lead, long-legged. They both looked sweaty and tired, and the cold thing in Bucky’s mind noted that Natasha was favoring her left leg.

Both of them skidded to a halt when they spotted Steve and Bucky. Then Sam started running again. Steve met him halfway, and Bucky hung back and watched as Sam grabbed him in a strong hug and pounded him on the back. "You really had us going for a second there," Sam was saying. "I should’ve known. I should’ve known."

"Looks like you’ve been busy," said Steve. "Heard there was an army out there. Leave any for me?"

"Nah, it was only a small army. Not worth your time," Sam said. He let Steve go and swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, but he was grinning. "And then they started falling over, and that just left the Hydra guys. No problem. I take it you two got the virus going?"

Steve shook his head. "I was out of it," he said. "It was all Bucky."

Sam turned to Bucky, took a deep breath, and said, "I hope you know you are the most convincing goddamn double-bluffing son of a bitch I ever met."

Bucky said, "Well, you have low standards. You usually spend your time with this lunk," and tilted his head at Steve. "He couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag."

"True," said Sam, and then he gave Bucky a bear hug, same as he’d given Steve, complete with pounding on the back. "When you walked out of there I swear I thought—what you wanted us all to think, I guess. I’m sorry you had to do it alone. You know we’d’ve had your back."

"You’d’ve given the game away, you mean," Bucky said. He returned the hug cautiously. Not something he was used to yet, people touching him. He thought maybe he might get the hang of it again sometime. Sam let him go fast and kept grinning at him. "Zola thought he knew what he was dealing with, with me."

Sam stepped back. He looked Bucky up and down, his grin turning into a thoughtful look. "And yet somehow I don’t think that guy knew anything about you," he said.

"Maybe not," said Bucky, mouth quirking. He looked away. The eye contact, and Sam’s knowledge, felt like too much.

Not in a bad way, though.

His gaze fell on Natasha. She was hanging back from the little reunion. He saw her reach to her belt. When she lifted her hand again her robot detector took a second to flash its little blue light. It was Steve she was watching. Bucky caught her eye. She shrugged and walked over.

Her face was doing something strange, but she’d got it under control by the time she reached the three of them. She walked right past Sam and Bucky and punched Steve lightly in the chest. It was nowhere near enough to hurt him, and it was telegraphed plenty in advance. Bucky knew it was coming even if Steve didn’t. He obviously didn’t, though. He looked surprised, and then hilariously wounded.

"Don’t do that," Natasha said.

"What?" said Steve.

"Scare me," said Natasha. "Don’t do it."

"I, uh," said Steve. "Okay?" He looked down at her face. "Sorry. I’m sorry."

"Good," she said, and stepped back.

Sam gestured with both hands and gave Steve a meaningful look. Steve looked confused. Sam did the gesture again, bigger this time. Natasha raised one eyebrow. Bucky swallowed a laugh. Steve said, "What?"

Sam gave up and said, "Give her a hug, Steve."

"I’m all right," Natasha said. She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I knew it was a trick."

Steve said, "I thought you only pretended to know everything." He pulled her into an embrace before she could finish coming up with a smart answer. Bucky thought he was the only one who could see her face, the way she closed her eyes and the very slight tremble of her mouth. When she let Steve go she gave Bucky a brief hard look as if to say, so what? Like she was embarrassed someone had spotted her feeling something.

Bucky said without thinking about it, "Hey, I cried all over him."

"What? No you didn’t. You beat me up," said Steve.

"You were trying to stab me," Bucky told him. "I was crying on the inside."

Natasha’s lips quirked.

"He was trying to stab you? Steve?" said Sam.

"Yeah," said Steve. All the smile vanished from his expression. He looked down at himself in the Hydra blacks and said, "They tried to do to me what they did to Bucky, I guess."

"I would be surprised if that wasn’t the plan for all of us," said Natasha.

Sam looked very grim suddenly. "That... would explain a few things," he said, and didn’t elaborate. Both Steve and Natasha seemed to know what he meant. Bucky remembered suddenly that Sam had been kidnapped by Zola before, ages ago. Before Bucky had even realized Zola was still in the picture.

He swallowed. He was going to say something. He was going to say—

"That was the plan," he said. "Not just for you." He was waiting for the pain, ready for it. But he was still going to—"For everyone," he said. "For the world. That was what he wanted."

And he stopped, shocked. His head felt clear. That hadn’t hurt.

"That would have been useful information to have a little earlier," Natasha commented after a moment.

Bucky glared at her. "I was trying."

Steve moved a little closer to him, put his hand not-quite on Bucky’s elbow but close. Close enough that Bucky could hold onto him if he wanted to.

"I know you were trying," Natasha said gently. "I saw."

Bucky subsided. "Yeah. Well." Steve did touch him then. Warm hand on his elbow. It was nice, having him there, steadying. "I dunno why I can say it now. I couldn’t before."

"If I was an expert on deep conditioned psychological triggers as applied to brainwashed assassins, I feel like I’d have a job with an actual office. Maybe a desk and a filing cabinet and a potted plant. Definitely less combat," Natasha said. She shrugged. "Two plants, even."

"Maybe it helps that you know he’s dead," said Steve quietly.

"Seventy percent," said Bucky, but he leaned into Steve's touch a little more. Steve squeezed his elbow, the corner of his mouth turning up.

"Seventy percent," he agreed. "And counting."

Natasha looked between them and laughed suddenly, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Well, good," she said, and it wasn't clear exactly what she was talking about. "I think. Now let's get out of here."

"Seconded," said Sam fervently.

"The sooner the better," said Steve. "We should report in. And then—"

"Then?" said Bucky.

"Then I want to go home," said Steve. "And not worry about anything for a week or two."

"Captain America wants some downtime?" said Sam. "Now that's something you don't hear every day."

Steve rolled his eyes. "What can I say, it's been a long week."

"Been a long couple of months," said Bucky, low.

There was a pause. "Been a long century," Steve said.

Bucky ducked his head. "The longest."

"Don't get me wrong, it's the best thing I ever heard," Sam said, looking between them with his eyebrows up. "There's times I thought the only way you'd ever give yourself a rest was if someone sat on you."

"Hey—"

Bucky smirked. "Good to know some things never change," he said. "He used to be easier to sit on."

"Probably take all three of us now," Sam agreed.

"I don't want to boast," Steve said. "But I could lift all three of you."

"I'm heavier than I look," Bucky informed him, flexing the metal arm. Steve gave him an unimpressed look, but there was a smile hidden in his eyes. Bucky couldn't call to mind exactly a time he'd see that before, Steve grumbling and pretending he didn't think Bucky was funny, fooling no one. He thought he had, though. He was pretty sure he had. And if he never remembered the last time, he could still remember this time.

"Well," said Natasha. "As soon as the Winter Soldier can bring himself to get dressed—"

Oh, right. Bucky snorted. "Fine."

There was a pile of mostly black in the corridor, all the clothes and weapons he'd abandoned at Zola's command, and his boots lined up next to them. He poked at it with one bare toe, and then bent and picked up the t-shirt and tugged it on. He shoved his feet into the boots. He thought for a second and then added one of the knives—the one Natasha had given him, back at the Tower. That would do. "Ready," he said.

"What about the rest of it?" said Natasha.

Bucky looked at the dark pile. It had been useful when he needed it. He'd need things like it again, because Steve was never quitting and Bucky was never letting him go out there alone. But right now—

"No army left out there?" he said.

Natasha shook her head.

"Think I'll leave it, then."

He'd get other weapons. Maybe he could get Tony to build him that missile launcher.

In the ruined garden that surrounded Pleasantview Bucky hung back a few steps from the others. After a moment Steve dropped back to join him. Up ahead Natasha and Sam started having a conversation about music, loud and cheerful.

"Nice of them to let us know they're not listening," said Steve.

Bucky huffed a quiet laugh. "Yeah. You okay?"

"I—I'm fine. I'm really sorry," said Steve.

"For what?"

"For—"

Bucky gave him a look. "Not your fault."

"But I could have—"

"Listen," Bucky said. "All the—all the people I killed. Everything Hydra made me do. And when I hurt you. Was that my fault?"

"No!"

Bucky kept looking at him. Steve avoided his gaze.

"Not your fault," Bucky said eventually. "Hypocrite."

"You fought them for decades," Steve said. "You broke through what they did to you even after seventy years. I should've—"

"Should've nothing," Bucky said. "Steve, you woke up after five minutes. Are you saying it shouldn't have worked at all? Because they had seventy years to practice their brainwashing techniques. They got pretty good at it." He knocked their shoulders together. "You're only human."

"You never did let me get away with any bullshit," Steve said quietly. He was smiling crookedly.

"Good for me," Bucky said. "Stop trying to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Steve. Sometimes things happen."

"Okay," said Steve. "Okay." He slipped his hand into Bucky's. "You're only human too, you know."

Steve's hand was warm. "I know," Bucky said. "I know."

"Are you okay?"

Bucky looked up at the tangles of the big green bushes. "I know this place," he said. "They kept me here for a while."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Steve's free hand curl into a fist. He said, "Once Fury's people are done going over it, there'll be nothing left."

"Mmm," said Bucky. That was a nice thought. He hoped they buried the basements, and the labyrinth underneath. He hoped they ripped the house down and made a bonfire out of anything that would burn. He hung on tight to Steve's hand. "Tell 'em to leave the garden."

"You want it fixed up?" Steve said carefully after a minute.

"Nah," Bucky said. He kicked at a drift of last fall's dead leaves and they scattered wetly. "Just leave it alone."

Steve squeezed his hand. "Okay."

The main gates were hanging open and Tony was waiting on the other side with folded arms. "So someone—naming no names—broke into my garage and stole my car," he said.

Everyone looked at Bucky.

"You had a dozen cars in there," Bucky said. "Figured you wouldn’t miss one."

"Little late to the party, aren't you, Tony?" said Natasha.

"I didn't know where you were till Mnemosyne alerted JARVIS!" Tony protested. "I don't know how he knew where you were—"

"Lucky guess," Bucky said, because it was easier than explaining. "Calm down. Mission complete. It's all fine."

"I wanted to help," Tony said. He paused. "Huh, that sounded whiny. I'm a grown man, I don't whine. Never mind."

"You did the virus," Bucky said. "You helped."

"Yeah, okay—I'm just used to being Q to my own James Bond—" Natasha snorted. "Shut up, I could be Bond, I'm smooth. I look good in black tie. No sniggering."

"Do you know what they're talking about," muttered Bucky to Steve as Natasha broke into actual laughter, laughing almost too hard to answer.

"I think it's a movie?" Steve said. "I've still got catching up to do." He hadn't let go of Bucky's hand.

Tony had apparently flown there in a very small very fast plane with a big Stark Industries logo on the side. "It's new. It's stealth," he said proudly.

"Looks pretty stealthy to me," said Steve.

"Yeah, it—oh, he thinks he's funny. He thinks he's funny. She thinks he's funny," he added, with an eye roll for Natasha, who was smirking.

"He's kind of funny," said Sam. "You gotta admit it."

Bucky hid a smile. "How's it stealth?" he said.

"You're the only one I like. Invisibility is how it's stealth. Like the old helicarrier," he added to Steve and Natasha, "but I miniaturized it. Stark proprietary holographic technology."

"Nice," said Bucky appreciatively.

"Thank you." Tony bounced on the balls of his feet. "It's also really, really fast. So I can give you a lift back to the Tower, and—where are you going?"

Bucky wandered over to the plane. "JARVIS?" he said, testing.

"May I be of assistance, sir?" said the smooth voice.

He swallowed. "How's Mnemosyne doing?"

There was a brief pause, and then JARVIS said, "Deletion still in progress. Estimated at ninety-two percent."

Ninety-two percent. Zola being wiped out of the world piece by piece, like he'd never lived.

Well, he was the one who'd chosen to make a machine of himself.

"Can you let Steve know when it's a hundred?" Bucky said. "Send him a text, or something."

"Certainly, sir."

"Thanks."

Bucky went back to the others. "No need for a lift," he told Tony. "We're heading back to DC. Steve wants some downtime. We'll take the car." He looked at Sam. "You coming?"

"Sounds good," said Sam.

"You'll take the—fine. Fine. You stole it fair and square," said Tony. He made a face and an expansive arm gesture. "Be my guest."

Natasha went back to New York with Tony. "You might not hear from me for a while," she said.

"Europe?" said Steve.

"Need to know," said Natasha with a smile. "I'll call you if I need you to know."

"Take care of yourself."

"I always do."

She hugged Sam and Steve goodbye, and whispered something in Steve's ear that made him laugh and go red at the same time. Then she came and stood in front of Bucky and gave him a serious look. He waited.

"Remember what I said," she said at last. "It gets easier."

"Not easy, though," Bucky said.

"No," she agreed. "Not that." She held out her hand. Bucky clasped it briefly. "Keep an eye on him," she said. "And—good luck, James."

"You too," said Bucky, not meaning her mission. "And... thanks."

Sam insisted on getting a chance to drive the Maserati. Bucky was fine with that. Steve took the passenger seat and Bucky stretched out as much as he could in the back. He kicked his boots off again. Steve figured out which button to press to make the roof of the car fold down. Sam tuned the radio to music Bucky didn't know. It was broad day, but he dozed off a little.

After an hour or so the car made a little chiming sound. "What was that?" Sam said.

"Apparently Tony's car can receive emails," said Steve after poking around for a moment.

"Oh yeah?"

"It's from JARVIS," said Steve. "It says... one hundred percent. Hey, Bucky," and Bucky could hear the grin in his voice without needing to open his eyes, "one hundred percent."

Bucky made a fist with his metal hand and punched the air lazily. Sam whooped and hit the gas, and the car almost flew down the open road.

Sam dropped them off at Steve’s apartment. "I’m keeping the car," he said. "I might sleep in the car." Steve laughed.

It was a long time since the night Bucky had left Steve's apartment by the window. He hadn't meant to come back. And then Zola had taken him, and he hadn't thought he'd ever get the chance. He kicked off the hateful boots just inside the door, then had to stop and just—look, for a moment. There was the couch where he'd slept in the beginning. Where he'd sat and stared at the wall while his mind ticked over from nothing to miserable nothing, reaching and reaching for memories he couldn't have, desperately playing the part of the old Bucky Barnes, like maybe if he got it right it would stick.

Steve's hand fell solid onto his shoulder. "You all right?"

"I..." said Bucky, and he reached up and caught Steve's hand in his. "...don't really want to talk about it."

Steve shrugged. "I'd say you should," he said, "but I'd be a hypocrite. Ask anyone." His fingers tightened around Bucky's.

Bucky tried to smile. "Say, why DC? I never asked."

"Well, my job was here," said Steve. "Until I blew it up. And Sam's here. The home where Peggy's—it's not far away. And New York was," his mouth tightened a little, and he finished, "full of ghosts."

"Ghosts," Bucky said.

Steve closed his eyes.

"You don't have to—"

"No, I—" Steve swallowed. "Everything looked the same, but wrong. Out of the corner of my eye things'd be familiar, the shapes of buildings, the streets, but if I turned my head—Or I'd see someone walking the other way and I'd think I knew them, but of course I didn't. There were days I'd walk round places I used to know and I just—well. There were days I thought I saw you on every street corner." He licked his lips. "I wasn't doing so well. In New York. So Fury moved me to DC and gave me something to do."

"Being Captain America."

"Nice thing about Captain America," said Steve, "he doesn't have a lot of time to feel sorry for himself."

Christ. "C'mere," said Bucky. He wrapped both arms around Steve and held on tight.

Steve let out a little laugh and clung. "God, Bucky, I missed you," he said. "I missed you so much."

Bucky wanted to say something like, I missed you too, but he hadn’t, hadn’t known to miss him. The Winter Soldier had been a hollow man, an empty shell who’d known nothing and felt nothing; it had been him, all right, but him with half his soul locked away. If there hadn’t been Steve to know him—if Bucky Barnes in the old days hadn’t been smart enough to save up everything about him that was worth saving and leave it all in Steve’s hands—

Well, he had, though. And you couldn’t go wrong choosing Steve.

Steve was still hanging onto him, but he began to let go when Bucky didn’t say anything. Bucky let him pull away. "So remember before when we said later?" he said.

"Um," said Steve.

Bucky smirked at him. "Is it later yet?"

Steve’s face was a picture—surprise, then pleasure, fading into something sweet and wicked that Bucky would’ve been happy to look at for a long time. "Guess it could be," he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Good," said Bucky, and kissed him.

Steve kissed back at once, mouth hot and eager. He cradled Bucky’s face in his hands like it was something precious, drawing him in close, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. Bucky hummed into the kiss at the gentle touch. He set both his hands on Steve’s waist, where they still fit nicely. The metal one could only feel the strength and tension in the muscles under his fingers; the human hand felt the warmth, too. Steve kissed him harder, then broke away long enough to say, "You need a shave."

"I’ll get right on that," Bucky said, and tugged his head back down.

This kiss was hotter, wetter. Steve made a low shocked noise deep in his throat when Bucky’s tongue slid into his mouth. The sound went straight to Bucky’s cock. His body wanted him to push Steve down and climb on top of him right there, but he didn't know if that was the right thing, if that was what you did. He settled for kissing Steve deep, savoring the noises he was making, the way he couldn’t seem to keep steady on his feet. When Bucky bit down on his lip Steve made an obscene noise and half-fell forward into his arms. Bucky stumbled back a pace under the weight, laughed when the kiss broke, said, "You’re too heavy to do that."

"Sorry," said Steve, and rubbed his temple, and smiled. "Can I—"

"Only if you want to," Bucky said, and Steve was already reaching for him.

He started steering Bucky backwards as he was kissing him this time, walking him past the couch he was never sleeping on again if he could help it, pressing small fast smiling kisses against Bucky’s mouth and pulling away before Bucky could kiss him back properly. Bucky finally made a frustrated sound and used the metal arm to swing Steve around and push him against the wall by his bedroom door. He got a hand in Steve’s hair to hold him there and gave it to him with tongue. Steve went liquid against him, kissing back just as hard, and if he hadn’t had the wall on one side and Bucky on the other Bucky was pretty sure he would’ve fallen over.

"I don’t," Steve got out when they broke apart to breathe the next time, "don’t really know what I’m doing here, Bucky..."

Bucky shrugged. "Me either," he said honestly. He had a feeling he’d done things like this before, but he couldn’t summon up specifics; his body seemed to understand the moves, but his mind was sparking with astonishment and pleasure every time Steve touched him. All of it felt strange and new and good. "We seem to be doing all right so far," was all he said, hoping Steve could hear it in his voice, how good this was.

He kissed the corner of Steve’s mouth again, feeling it curl into a smile. Yeah, Steve got it.

"Just as long as you’re not expecting miracles," he murmured, turning his head into Bucky’s kiss.

"If this isn’t a world-class performance with champagne to follow I’ll be sorely disappointed, Rogers," Bucky said, right against his mouth. "Come on, Steve. You know me better than that."

It felt shivery-good to say it, and even better to feel Steve’s chest vibrate with laughter and hear him agree, low, "I do."

"Just let me," Bucky said. "I want to."

"Okay," said Steve. "Okay."

Some pushing and pulling got them finally through the door into Steve’s bedroom, and then Bucky shoved Steve down onto the bed and Steve dragged him down after. They made out some more, long slow dirty kisses. Steve slid his leg in between Bucky’s thighs and then looked pleased with himself when Bucky had to stop kissing him for a second to roll his hips and gasp at the friction against his cock.

In revenge Bucky pushed him onto his back and crawled on top of him, grinding his hips down deliberately against the line of Steve’s cock in his pants, making them both whimper. Steve’s eyes fluttered half-shut. He was flushed and gorgeous from this angle. Bucky mouthed at the strong line of his jaw and shuddered when Steve’s hands slid up under his shirt and rubbed long curved shapes against his back. He put his head down in the space between Steve’s neck and his shoulder, pressed his smile to the side of Steve’s throat, and said, "You sure we never did this before?"

Another laugh rumbled through Steve’s chest. He set his nails lightly into Bucky’s skin so the next long slow stroke of his hands was a delicious scratch. Bucky whimpered and thrust against Steve’s thigh. "I think I'd know," said Steve.

"I dunno. Got your brains scrambled recently," Bucky said. "Maybe you forgot."

"I can't believe you're joking about that," said Steve, sounding guiltily amused.

Bucky snickered. "If I can't do it, who can?"

"I suppose," Steve said, "you've got a point." He turned his head and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s hair. His hands had found the knot high in Bucky’s back that came from the weight of the metal arm pulling on muscle and bone, and he was digging his fingers in, loosening it up, sweet pressure almost on the edge of pain but not quite. Bucky moaned loudly. Getting on top of Steve had definitely been revenge for something at some point, but now it just seemed like he’d had a really good idea.

"And you spent seventy years on ice, couldn't have been good for you either," he mumbled, barely listening to what was coming out of his mouth. "I really managed to keep my hands off you?" They were so wrapped up in each other he could feel Steve’s chest move every time he drew a breath. "I must’ve been out of my mind."

He turned his head and licked along the tendon in the side of Steve's throat. Then he bit down and sucked. The small sounds Steve was making went desperate and loud. His skin tasted of salt and sweat, and the smell of him was everywhere. Bucky turned his head and rubbed his stubbled cheek against Steve's neck. Steve's hips jerked sharply and he made an embarrassing noise. Bucky could feel Steve's cock rubbing hard against his thigh, Steve trying and failing not to push up against him again. It was a good feeling. "I don't," Steve said, sounding distracted, and he got a handful of Bucky’s hair and dragged him up into another deep wet kiss.

Bucky closed his eyes and just let himself get kissed for a moment or two, luxuriating in Steve’s attention, his care. He set his teeth gently in Steve's plush lower lip. Steve breathed in sharply through his nose and his mouth opened. His touch on Bucky’s back went very light, and then his hands dropped to Bucky’s waist and gripped tight as he thrust up against Bucky’s thigh. Bucky could feel the sweet tension thrumming through him everywhere their bodies were touching. He'd forgotten what they were even talking about by the time Steve broke away to catch his breath and pant, "I—I—Bucky—guess I wasn't always this pretty—"

"Think you're pretty, do you?" Bucky murmured. He slid his right hand up under Steve's shirt, feeling the muscles twitch against the pass of his fingers. God, he wasn't wrong. But he thought—Bucky's memories of small Steve were still fragmentary and brittle, precious scraps of a past he'd never get back all the way. The clearest one he had was still the hallucination of small Steve leaning over him like a shield when Zola had had him, and that had never really happened. But still—"You were always something else."

He didn't know if he'd thought that before. It was what he thought now.

"Shut up," Steve said, too breathless to sound properly annoyed though he was giving it his best shot. His face was flushed, pink all over, deeper red on his cheeks. "You obviously—Anyway, it was illegal."

"Well, that sounds like something I'd care about," Bucky said. He rolled his hips again, deliberately, felt Steve push up into the press of his hard cock. Both of them moaned. Bucky hooked his fingers under the edge of Steve's shirt and tugged it up and off.

They both had to sit up to get rid of the shirt, and Steve let Bucky go to lift his arms. His pink blush went all the way down his chest. Bucky sat back on his haunches to look at him, and if it was a wrench to let go it was worth it for the view, Steve shirtless and flushed, biting his lip, his fair hair sticking up every which way. Bucky's gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants and then went back up to his face, and now Steve looked slightly embarrassed as well as turned on, but he still raised his eyebrows and leaned back on his elbows, spreading his legs a little so the fabric went tight, showing off.

Bucky grinned. "Guess you're a little pretty," he said.

"Thanks," said Steve, poker-faced. "I try."

Bucky kept looking at him a moment longer, just looking, trying to fix the picture in his mind. Something to keep against dark times. Something to come back to. He got distracted enough that he didn’t notice the sudden glint in Steve’s eyes until it was too late, and then Steve jumped him.

There was a flash—a fraction of a second—when Bucky’s body felt the weight of Steve on him and the suddenness of it and wanted to lash out, wanted to fight, to do the only thing it knew how to do properly.

Only a flash and the feeling was gone; it was just Steve on top of him, Steve grinning down at him for a second like he thought he’d gotten away with something. It was Steve pulling Bucky’s shirt off him with greedy hands, face going soft and open when he saw Bucky laid bare under him. Bucky touched the knuckles of his human hand to the side of Steve’s face, and Steve closed his eyes and turned just slightly and kissed them. Bucky opened his hand and urged Steve down onto him with a hand curved around the base of his skull, all that strength and smooth skin to touch, and he—god, what he wouldn’t have given to have both hands human just for this, just so he could feel Steve’s warmth against his palm and not have to stop touching his hair to do it. But this was good. They kept kissing and rubbing against each other, and Bucky smoothed his hand down the middle of Steve’s broad back to his tailbone, grinned at the way Steve squirmed, and palmed his ass the way he clearly wanted.

Yeah, this was very, very good.

"I want to," said Steve, "can I—" and then he apparently gave up on trying to explain himself and just stroked down Bucky’s stomach, making him tense and breathe in quick, before he brushed his fingers along the trail of hair and hooked them into the waistband of Bucky’s pants.

"Anything you want," Bucky said. Steve was already deftly undoing the buttons and urging Bucky to lift up so he could pull the black pants and underwear off together. His eyes looked very dark as he licked his lips and stared at Bucky’s body. For a moment Bucky felt, absurdly, self-conscious (and when had he ever felt that? When had his nakedness last been something to give a damn about? Not since—)

When Steve’s hand closed tentatively around Bucky’s cock Bucky let out a loud moan and his head fell back. He twisted his hips up into Steve’s grip. "Come on," he said, "Steve, more than that, give me more. Come on—"

"Take it easy," said Steve, but he sounded satisfied. His hand tightened around Bucky’s cock and he started jerking Bucky off, steady confident pulls of his hand, and Bucky—god, hadn’t even thought of this in such a long time, hadn’t remembered, hadn't known that anything you did with your body could feel this good. It was fantastic. He reached out for Steve, wanting him close, and Steve lay down half-on him again and kept jerking him off. He was watching Bucky’s face with wide blue eyes, and breathing almost as hard as Bucky was every time Bucky thrust into his hand; he liked doing this for him.

Bucky’s cock was so hard it nearly hurt. He was leaking at the tip, and Steve left off jerking him for a moment to rub his hand over the head, get the wetness all over his palm. Then he went back to it harder and faster, warm palm and long fingers squeezing hot tight wet around Bucky’s cock. Bucky’s moans turned into curses and pleas that made Steve grin, a little stunned-looking, and then drop his head and kiss him hard. When Bucky came a few seconds later it was with Steve’s tongue buried deep in his mouth, Steve’s body covering his, Steve’s hand firmly milking his cock and then going slack and gentle as Bucky finally twitched and kicked a little, sensitive.

"Thought you said I shouldn’t expect much," he said, when he could remember how words worked again.

"Well, that one I did already know how to do," said Steve, smirking rueful-sweet. He rubbed the inside of Bucky’s thigh with his wet hand.

Bucky shivered. He felt loose and easy and really, really good, and the image Steve had just put in his head was a good one. Steve touching himself, god. He rolled onto his side and tugged not-very-effectively at Steve’s pants. His coordination was shaky and he didn’t care. "Why are you still wearing these?" he said, and then, "Show me."

Steve got the rest of his clothes off in an eager rush. He let out an obscene sound when he got his hand around himself. His cock was hard and full, wet at the tip, red against the lighter color of his fingers as he gripped it. His eyes were fixed on Bucky as he stroked himself briskly. "Hey," said Bucky, and put his hand around Steve’s wrist. "Slow down."

"Slow down?" said Steve, and then swallowed a gasp as Bucky dropped his hand lower and tangled their fingers together around Steve’s cock.

"Yeah," Bucky said. He put his other arm around Steve’s shoulders to hold him close, and Steve leaned into the crook of Bucky’s left shoulder like he saw no difference between metal and flesh. "Slow down."

Steve’s breathing quickly turned into ragged, hungry gasps as Bucky slowly moved their hands together on him. His eyes kept fluttering closed and then blinking open again, like he wanted to watch but couldn’t help himself. Bucky could see the hitching rise and fall of his chest as he swallowed the noises he was trying not to make. He kept quiet to hear it better. When he took mercy on Steve and let him speed up the pace Steve groaned out loud. The pink flush on his chest got darker. He was sweating all over as he snapped his hips up into the tight warm doubled grasp of their hands.

"Bucky," he whispered right before he came, and Bucky held him tight while he shuddered and gasped with his face hidden against Bucky’s collarbone.

Bucky woke in the middle of the night and didn’t know what had woken him.

He didn’t remember when they’d gotten under the covers, but they must’ve at some point. Steve was sprawled on his front, breathing slow and deep. Bucky was sticky and sweaty, and there was dried come on his stomach and thigh. He scratched at it absently. They should maybe have showered. He still felt good, relaxed, easy.

He brushed his hand against the side of Steve’s elbow, which was warm. Feeling daring, he shuffled closer, pressed his face into the soft skin of Steve’s shoulder blade. He smelled like sweat and sex and himself. Bucky closed his eyes.

"Okay?" he heard Steve mumble.

"Okay," Bucky said. He kissed the nape of Steve’s neck.

"'M not a robot," Steve murmured. He turned over and spread his arms wide, stretching, before he hooked one around Bucky’s neck and tugged him down against his side. "’M sleeping."

Bucky stilled halfway through a soft laugh as he suddenly thought that he'd heard that before, sometime. G'way, Bucky, 'm sleeping. He didn’t know when. They’d shared rooms before the war—that was part of the history he'd memorized—so maybe sometime then. It was strange, though; it didn't hurt or sicken him, not knowing. It didn't matter. It didn't have to matter. Now was now.

"Bucky?" said Steve, sounding a little more awake, and worried.

Bucky shook his head, which made Steve shift and mumble and move his hand so he could touch Bucky’s hair. "S'okay," he said. "Just thinking. Not a robot either."

"I know," said Steve, only half-awake but still hilariously offended.

Bucky smiled. "Go back to sleep," he said. He closed his eyes again. Steve's arm around him was warm. Steve was warm all over. "It's okay. I know you."

Notes:

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