Chapter Text
What if I don't want the monster
to stop being a monster?
What if that's the only anchor I have left?
What if my sanity depends on being able to point
at the bad thing and say, That is the bad thing.
Haven't I already lost enough time
losing track of who the enemy is?
I've spent half of my life not knowing the difference
between killing myself and fighting back.
Andrea Gibson
__
“You’re getting slow, old man,” Sam says.
In the split second it takes for Steve to pinpoint Sam’s tone as worried rather than teasing Sam lands another hit, one that sets Steve’s lungs ablaze and makes his bones hum with the vibration of it.
“I’m out of pract–,” is all Steve manages before Sam swings for his head and sends the ground rushing for Steve, topples the world. The sky over New York City is spinning, steel grey, getting darker. There is a single helicopter in the distance, hovering still like a bird of prey waiting to plummet.
Steve, attempting to shake the dizziness from his brain, blinks up at Sam. “You’re getting faster.” He feels the sting of a cut high on his cheek, the air colder to the wetness of blood, and suddenly breathes deeper with the pain.
Sam purses his lips and looks down at him in a way that could be saying, Man, you’ve got issues, but probably says nothing at all.
“I’m glad you’re here, Sam,” Steve says, and, as expected, finds Sam’s mouth relaxing into a smile.
“Someone’s gotta kick your ass every once in a while,” Sam says, grinning. “Man, I’m sorry about your face. I just reduced your brand value by ten percent at least.”
“How long are you staying?” Steve asks, dabbing his fingertips against the wound. The skin has split where Sam’s fist hit his cheekbone, a neat laceration.
“I’m taking Bucky down to D. C. on the weekend,” Sam says. “He’s got a prep meeting with the Hawleys on Saturday.”
Steve feels his stomach knot at the mention of the lawyers, his mouth tenses, but he nods. “Good plan.”
“Let’s get your face fixed up before Stark can charge me for it,” Sam says, and reaches out a hand to Steve. Steve, far from tired but glad to get away from underneath the lowering sky, takes it gratefully.
The strangest part is this: When Steve comes down from the roof bruised and battered, Bucky is there waiting for him, and that is not something Steve thought he’d ever have to get used to. There’s no trace of concern in the way Bucky eyes him top to bottom to take in the injuries Steve sustained, let alone the precious brand of exasperation Bucky used to have for Steve alone. Anger would be a gift by now. But Bucky doesn’t tease him anymore or gets mad at him, and Steve hardly bothers with the bruises, just dabs a little iodine on the cut and waits for it to heal.
Moving to the kitchen to put away the iodine Steve feels Bucky in his peripheral vision. In socks and sweatpants Bucky moves soundlessly, retreating to the sofa in the living room corner of the loft. Steve stalls for a moment, fiddling with the bottle, watching.
The TV is running with the inevitable news channel, a grey-faced anchor and white letters on angry red announcing BREAKING, as if they’d ever do anything else these days. At least for now the Winter Soldier has fallen out of focus: when SHIELD fell, the country faced an executive vacuum. The news read like a wildlife documentary, vultures fighting over scraps of a decaying body. It's only a question of days before they refocus on Bucky, or what's left of him.
Bucky tucks his feet under, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his sweatshirt. A small part of Steve, a stubborn, selfish part, waits for something else, anything beyond a glance, but Bucky just turns his attention back to the screen.
“How’s the tide, Barnes?” Sam inquires, strolling into the kitchen behind Steve.
Bucky looks up, registers the question. He likes Sam, Steve can tell. Sam has an easiness with him Steve never quite achieved.
“The usual,” Bucky says, gesturing vaguely towards the TV.
“Anyone try to interview you while we were upstairs? Book deals? Proposals?”
Bucky shakes his head. “15 missed calls though,” he says, nodding towards the phone Steve left on the counter.
Sam huffs a laugh. “They're rolling back in for the preliminary hearing, I see.” He runs his hand over his short hair and sighs. “How are you holding up?” he asks.
“I’m okay,” Bucky responds. His eyes flicker towards Steve in the split-second before he does. It doesn’t escape Steve – his stomach jolts for a beat – and it certainly doesn’t escape Sam.
“Swell,” Sam says, but he, too, looks at Steve, a concerned crease forming between his eyebrows.
“Drop your shoulders,” Sam says, stepping out of the bathroom. He is rubbing his scalp dry with one of Steve’s towels, throwing Steve, who is still in his clammy sweatshirt, a towel of his own. Steve wipes his face and flinches when he finds the cut on his cheek still stinging to the touch.
Sam turns to the cupboard to file through Steve’s clothes, picking a fresh sweater. “I spoke to the Hawleys back in D. C.,” he says. “They said we had every reason to be confident about the prelim. I mean, I’m not telling you to be chill about this because I can see why you’re not. But this is a chance, yeah? No reason to be quite so tense.”
Steve nods dutifully. It’s not like he doesn’t know any of this. He remembers Catherine Hawley telling him with all the cautious phrasing customary to her trade that the preliminary hearing meant there still was the chance Bucky wouldn’t have to stand trial at all, that the state might see sense and rule Bucky a victim of HYDRA’s crimes rather than a perpetrator.
“Let’s be real, Steve,” Sam says, his head emerging from Steve’s sweater, “if anyone can get him out of this untried, it’s them. They scare me, and I’m on their team.”
Steve almost smiles.
Bess and Catherine Hawley have all the fierceness and conviction Steve was looking for in an attorney, sisters from the Bronx with a shared life story not less unlikely than Bucky’s or Steve’s, perhaps minus the superpowers. They are short, smart, black, and utterly fearless. They are also the only attorneys he could find willing to fight Bucky’s fight on Steve’s terms, which wasn’t even terms, plural, at all. Just the one. Just the truth.
Waiting for Sam to get dressed, Steve idly picks up Sam’s tablet, unlocking it with a swipe of his finger. News alerts are pouring in by the hour. He tries to keep track, it can’t hurt to know what the public knows, or thinks it knows.
Steve hesitates when instead of a news website the screen lights up to what looks like a collection of blueprints, a mission plan unfamiliar to him. His finger hovers over the minimize button for a moment before he swipes right to flick through it. It takes only seconds for him to understand that Natasha’s tireless work has washed another HYDRA base to their shore, out in the forests extending beyond Omsk, just miles from the Russian-Kazakh border. It’s a development that sinks in uncomfortably, especially given the fact that up until now Steve had no idea Natasha was even still looking.
He holds the tablet in his lap and waits until Sam turns around, until Sam’s eyes drop to the device in Steve’s hands and his expression shifts.
“Ah,” Sam says.
“Were you going to tell me about this?” Steve asks.
“We’re not sure if it really is anything,” Sam says. His voice is level, calm, but it doesn’t escape Steve that he hasn’t answered the question, and instead has moved his stance into a slightly more defensive position.
“If he’s been kept there at all it’s worth our while,” Steve says. “You know that.”
“Absolutely,” Sam says. He sounds sincere about it. He has dropped his hands, Steve’s towel still in them. “But you know we need Hill to greenlight this to get the necessary equipment, and so far she’s not convinced.”
Sam is steady under Steve’s gaze, which is more than most people Steve knows would be able to pull off. Not just that, his expression remains open, approachable, without a shadow of deception – or guilt.
“According to Nat’s deep background it was a tent pole, but there's no way of confirming that yet,” Sam continues. “We didn’t want to get your hopes up before we heard back from HQ.”
Steve nods and tries for gratitude, but he can’t shake the familiar nagging sensation in his gut. He knows the feeling from ages ago, from when he was smaller: the feeling of having been benched for a fight that should have been his, of being sidelined as a form of protection he never asked for.
He picks up the tablet again to examine the map more closely. Red dots mark the designated drop-offs for two operatives on opposite sides of the complex.
“So it’s you and Nat, yeah?” Steve asks, trying to match Sam’s sober all-business sort of tone.
Sam nods curtly.
“Are you sure it’s abandoned? A third man would be a good idea given the terrain,” Steve weighs in, flipping through the other blueprints that focus in more detail on the different levels of the building.
“Nat is mobilizing Clint,” Sam says. “We’re good, Steve.”
“I’m just saying,” Steve says.
“I know what you’re saying,” Sam responds. “And I’ll talk to Hill if you want me to, but you know where she stands on your priorities and frankly she’s got a point.”
Steve sets his jaw. It’s not like he doesn’t understand Hill’s reservation. All of her equipment still bears SHIELD seals after all and the press is circling Steve like wolves. Any misstep would be excuse enough to tear him apart. Steve on the other hand, being reduced to walking circles in the flat and sparring on the rooftop with no real stakes, feels a tenseness growing in his chest like a cancer that’s making it progressively harder to breathe.
“I just want to do something,” Steve says.
“I know, Steve,” Sam says gently. “It’s tough, just standing by, I know the feeling. But I’m telling you, you’re doing a great deal.” Sam pauses, and, nodding towards the closed door leading to the living room, adds, “For him.”
Steve finally drops his shoulders, disarmed. His gaze involuntarily follows Sam’s to the door. He can almost picture Bucky behind it, on the couch, slouching, focused on the TV, some strands of his hair still tucked into the collar of his sweatshirt.
He knows Sam means well but Sam is also a terrible liar.
“He doesn't even talk to me.” The words tumble out before Steve can stop them, having burned on this tongue for weeks. His tone is harsher than he expected, his throat tight.
“Still?” Sam asks. His voice is calm, but he sounds on guard nonetheless.
“He talks to you, right?” Steve finds himself asking. “Is he okay?”
“You know I can’t tell you what he says,” Sam says, gently, his expression changing into something too close to pity for Steve to bear.
Steve turns away from Sam, walks over to the window for lack of better options. They have been over this, Steve knows the rules. First and foremost he promised to leave Bucky with a choice. It sounded so easy back when Bucky was still in psychiatric care and Steve, despite the horrors he found in the Winter Soldier’s file, was naively convinced Bucky had come back for him. It’s so much harder now. Steve has never known Bucky this quiet.
“I get it,” Steve says. Swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m glad he talks at all.”
“He's still not initiating,” Sam concludes.
Steve shakes his head, inches closer to the glass. It exudes a chilling, calming coolness. When he looks down, Steve can see the yellow cabs racing in the street, people, tiny, hurrying along the pavement, tinted orange already by the streetlights. His breath leaves a blurry spot on the thick wall of security glass separating him from the edge. It’s going to be winter soon.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Steve couldn’t see Bucky’s brain working behind his eyes, if he couldn’t see him clenching his fists and jaw triggered by a thought, a memory resurfacing. If Bucky didn’t jerk awake at night in the other room, panting, and calmed down again silently, going back to bed sweat-drenched, and always alone. Steve remembers this feeling vividly, the sensation of reaching out, down, hoping to catch Bucky, and finding nothing but thin air instead. It wouldn’t be so bad, a little voice in the back of his head goes, if he didn’t know Bucky has chosen the confidence of others over Steve’s own.
“Are you making progress at all?” Sam asks.
“He’s settled in,” Steve says, avoiding the part of the question that extends on him as well. There is a certain inevitability about the way they swung back together since Bucky walked into a D. C. police station on a bright September afternoon, malnourished but unarmed. Like pendulums with tangled strings they can only be kept apart for so long. But everything about the way they used to be has changed. Steve doesn’t know how to hold himself in Bucky’s presence anymore, can’t do much besides rolling his shoulders in, making himself look smaller, non-threatening.
“At least he trusts you,” Steve says, meaning to sound sober about it, but he doesn’t quite manage to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and the you especially.
“You were always going to be the exception there,” Sam says carefully. Steve feels him move in his back, braces his shoulders for a comforting touch, but Sam keeps his distance. “With the role you’ve played for him, in his past and now, Steve, you’ve got to understand that he approaches you differently.”
Steve nods curtly. “I get it.” He knows trauma twists people into different shapes, he himself has been twisted, hardly recognizes himself sometimes. His barriers are paper-thin these days, ready to crumble to the touch.
“You don’t have to do this alone, you know,” Sam says to his back. “You don’t have to do any of this alone.”
“I got this,” Steve tries to say, but he can’t find the voice for it. Instead, he draws a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment, swallows the absurd urge to cry.
“I’m just saying, man,” Sam presses gently, “I’m not saying you ain’t got this, I’m just saying that if you’re lost with this, no-one’s gonna blame you if you seek help.”
Steve takes a step back from the glass, severing the mild pull of vertigo.
“I got this,” he repeats, steadier now, turning around to Sam. He tries his best to force his face into the stern mask people recognize as Captain America, determined jaw and eyebrows, and if he’s not convincing at least now he sounds forceful enough for Sam to understand that he’s going to stand by this lie no matter what.
Sam nods, resigned, and gives Steve’s shoulder a short, reassuring squeeze. When he leaves that night, he takes the concerned crease between his eyebrows with him.
Steve mechanically reaches out in the dark for the glowing rectangle of his phone, buzzing alive with yet another news alert. The intervals slow down past midnight but the American crisis is global news, it doesn’t adhere to time zones.
Steve swipes the Telegraph’s article on US anti-terror efforts off his screen and rolls onto his back, closes his burning eyes. Ever since the serum he has found it hard to rest, he feels it running through his bloodstream like a constant adrenaline high. Since the ice, falling asleep has been harder still, with the cold reaching out for his gut every time he closed his eyes. Since D. C. he hardly sleeps at all. Every alert on his phone comes with a fresh jolt of panic.
After D. C. Steve has been issued accommodation in New York City he would blush seeing the price-tag of, which is why Stark makes sure he never does. The decoration is modern, Stark calls it efficient, Steve would describe it as clinical. His bedroom is never fully dark. The smog carries the glow of the city up to his full-length windows, orange and toxic, the system Stark installed – intercom, sound system, security monitor – ever-present at night with the blue glow of its touchpads.
Steve can hear Bucky breathe in the next room over, rugged and fast, on the edge of a nightmare, and swallows the urge to get up and check on him, reminds himself that’s not how they are anymore. Their space is not crowded now like their Brooklyn flat used to be, always too small for the two of them, for Bucky’s restless limbs and Steve’s big ideas. This place is big enough for Bucky and him to draw their own circles, hardly ever crossing.
The problem is Steve’s brain won’t quiet down no matter how he exhausts himself sparring. He is still too aware of his own body for meditation, and his metabolism burns any medication with superhuman speed. Sam has joked about horse tranquilizers, the kind you administer with blow darts, and Steve remembers laughing. Steve remembers the short, bright space of days after they met and before Bucky returned like something out of a different life. Sometimes he thinks about how Sam’s life must have changed just as much as his own afterwards. Above all else, Sam has been there, a warm, comforting gravitational center to his life, not demanding anything in return, which is more than Steve could ever have asked of him. Steve has never thanked him, couldn’t ever thank him enough.
The phone next to him buzzes again, sliding on the mattress. Steve feels the vibration in his teeth, presses his eyes shut for a second before he opens them to the blinding light of the display.
The notification clocks in at 08:03. Somewhere along the line Steve must’ve slipped into sleep without even noticing. He slides his thumb to the right and the screen opens up to the familiar bright yellow of the Daily Bugle’s opinion resort. Steve knows their track record well. Back when Bucky was still in custody Natasha and Sam kept tally marks on the sides the papers were taking.
Steve finally blinks fully awake, twists his body into an upright position against the headboard of his bed. He scrolls down with numb fingers, half hoping for another think piece on the fragility of the American power complex, panic already stirring at the base of his spine.
BARNES SPOTTED IN ROGERS' MANHATTAN APT
the headline reads, black font on yellow ground. A picture sprawls across the screen below. It takes a second for Steve to reconcile the strange angle with the flat he knows: it's taken from outside their full-length windows, it's their living room, their kitchen set on the far right end. He recognizes his own still unfamiliar shape in the back, cutting something at the kitchen counter. On the sofa, his unmistakably gleaming arm angled towards the camera, sits Bucky, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, transfixed by the TV. Is this man James Buchanan Barnes?, the caption asks.
The phone vibrates again in Steve's hands, it sends a shock through his spine. He can't breathe. How did they find them? Another notification:
ROGERS AND BARNES LIVING TOGETHER?
And another.
HAS CAPTAIN AMERICA FORSAKEN US?
Steve presses his eyes shut. He forces himself to take deep gulps of air, forces his hands to be steady. He breathes deep. He selects the settings and turns off the news alert. He goes into his contacts. Sam is first on his list.