Chapter Text
Four months.
Captain America has been missing from the public eye for four months.
People are getting antsy. All the publicity and cover ups in the world couldn’t cover up the fact that something is wrong, something has happened. People aren’t stupid. Crowds of people, citizens working together, aren’t stupid. Bucky knows that better than anyone. He knows not to underestimate the power of the people.
He also doesn’t really care about what the people think right now, though.
He should be campaigning still. Rallying. Sam was so supportive of this whole congressman business, he wanted to see Bucky succeed. He would be upset to know Bucky has all but ditched his campaign.
No. He will be upset. Because he’s still alive. He’s somewhere and hell or high water, Bucky will find him. The people need Captain America. He needs Captain America— he needs Sam. He needs Sam to be okay.
So he’s been working with anyone and everyone. He’ll do what he has to if it means finding Sam, and he doesn’t really care what that entails. He’ll do just about anything at this point— and a desperate super soldier is not a foe many people want to deal with.
But somehow, despite it all, Bucky isn’t there when they find Sam.
He’s halfway across the globe following another lead when his phone begins blaring in the middle of a busy street. Incoming Call: Joaquin Torres. He fumbles with it, and it takes him a painful amount of rings before he can finally answer.
The young man wastes no time as his voice crackles through the speakers, and for once in his life, he’s deadly serious.
The words ring in Bucky’s ears like funeral bells. “We’ve found him.”
And just like that, Bucky’s off.
Getting back to the States isn’t difficult, but it takes too much time. Everything takes too much time; the planes, the cars, the trains. Half of Bucky wishes he could teleport, but another half knows it’s probably best that he can’t do that, actually.
He ends up at some military base in some middle of nowhere town in Arkansas, just a few hours from Louisiana— from Delacroix. When Bucky arrives he vaguely wonders if anyone has called Sarah yet.
Joaquin meets him just as he exits the truck. His feet aren’t on the pavement five seconds before the young man runs up to him, looking uncharacteristically… nervous. Bucky has never seen Joaquin without some glimmer of hope or a mischievous grin on his face, but all of that has been drowned out by the constant worry they’ve both been dealing with since Sam had gone missing. Bucky had foolishly hoped Joaquin would greet him with a grin, some sort of checkered flag meaning this nightmare was finally over, but obviously there is still something wrong, the night isn’t over yet. Maybe it never will be .
“Why here?” Bucky asks as they walk across the base towards the medical building. “Why not the hospital in Virginia, the one you went to? Or one closer to Delacroix?”
“They think it’s best for him to be here right now,” Joaquin explains. “Top notch security and care, and…” his voice trails off for a moment. “And so he can get his bearings again. Rehabilitate him.”
He scans a key card as they walk into the building. It reeks of artificial sterilization and chemicals. Bucky’s brows furrow. “Why would—“
Joaquin stops in front of him— in front of the elevator. “You need to know what happened.”
“Tell me on the way,” Bucky says, turning past the younger man and pressing the elevator button so hard he nearly cracks it.
“I don’t think—“ he’s cut off by the elevator and Bucky shoves past him. Joaquin is quick to join.
“Floor?”
“We need to talk first,” Joaquin says. “Please.”
“We can on the way,” Bucky says again. “What floor?”
Joaquin scans that damn card again and another row of buttons are revealed from the wall. He hits the very last button and the elevator begins to drop. Bucky tries not to think of why they’d want Sam hidden away.
“He’s stable,” Joaquin says. “Vitals and everything, I mean. He’s not in any danger but he’s still unconscious. I think he was a bit malnourished when we found him? I’m not really sure, I’m honestly not the best with this medical stuff, y’know? And he, uh—“
The elevator opens. Bucky doesn’t waste time.
“Bucky—“ Joaquin starts. “Er— I mean… Sargent Barnes? Senator? Whatever, just listen. He isn’t conscious yet, and—“
“I just want to check on him,” Bucky says, “He doesn’t have to be awake for me to see if he’s okay.”
“Well— yeah,” Joaquin says. “But listen, he’s— he’s different.”
And this, finally, has Bucky stop in his tracks, in the middle of a sterile corridor with painfully bright fluorescents humming overhead.
“Different?” Bucky repeats. “Different how?”
“They did things to him,” Joaquin says. He’ll hardly meet his eyes. “He- He was awake, sort of, when we found him. And he wasn’t— I mean, he wasn’t not Sam, but he was… wrong. In shock, maybe, but they did things to him, experiments, and—“
And maybe Joaquin thought this would make Bucky hesitate. Maybe he thought Bucky would listen more once he heard the gravity of the situation.
Instead, Bucky sets off in a run.
He can hear Joaquin trailing behind him, still rambling, still trying to explain something that Bucky could honestly care less about hearing— he needs to see Sam for himself, he needs to understand this and nothing Joaquin says or does is going to do that right now.
Bucky doesn’t know where he’s going. Or, he shouldn’t. But there’s only one door at the end of the hall that has a high-level classification lock, so he’s willing to guess. Maybe Joaquin thought he’d be able to stop Bucky from rushing into this headfirst. Unfortunately, Bucky has well over a century on the kid and it wasn’t hard to nick that little ID card from him in the elevator.
Bucky enters the room and he feels his heart drop into his boots.
Deja vu washes over him like a tsunami. For a brief moment, he isn’t here. He’s in the observation room with Sam watching Joaquin fight for his life after surfing a fucking missle. He’s talking to Sam, he’s telling him he’s so much stronger than he realizes— because he is— and he’s saying he loves him for the first time and then he’s leaving, because he can’t have Sam think about it for too long. He can’t let himself think about it for too long either. So he says he loves him and he leaves and they’re back to their normal routine calls and visits after, until he was taken.
Now, Bucky stands in a different observation room. Joaquin is behind him, he can hear the younger man’s labeled breathing.
Bucky’s eyes can’t move away from the glass.
On the other side of it is Sam, on a table, eyes closed tight and brows furrowed like he’s having a bad dream. He’s bruised and his lip is busted, he’s hooked to an IV, but otherwise, he looks fine.
Almost. He’s almost fine.
“I didn’t know how to explain it,” Joaquin says quietly.
Because Sam is also, most certainly, different. Large, feathery wings— the color of the night sky and nothingness— are stretched out and draped across two small tables on either side of Sam. Bucky watches as one of the appendages suddenly flicks like one’s leg would in a deep slumber. He can see some of the feathers have flickers of brown in them, like rich earth has been mixed in with the void itself.
He looks like an angel. A fallen angel.
Sam Wilson, Captain America— now a modern day Icarus. Too close to the sun, bruised and beaten but somehow still alive, despite it all. The waves haven’t drowned him out.
Yet.
Joaquin breaks the silence. “Bucky?”
“What did he say?” Bucky asks. “When he was awake. Did he speak?” Could he?
“He asked for you,” Joaquin says, taking a place standing next to him. “Sort of, anyways. It’s… it was hard. To get what was happening. There was so much happening.”
“And the people that did this to him?” Bucky asks.
“Some mad scientist bullshit,” Joaquin replies. “Killed himself before we could stop him and blew up his lab along with himself. We recovered his body and records, but it’ll be a long time before we figure out the specifics of what he was doing— what he did— to Sam, or if it can be… fixed.”
“Fixed,” Bucky echos.
He doesn’t believe in fixing things. Not things like this, anyways. It’s like when something’s broken, you can’t just glue it all back together and expect it to be the same. You can still see the cracks.
He knows that. He feels it, every day.
Bucky doesn’t leave Sam’s side for the following week. With some haggling, he’s allowed to sit in, sit beside Sam. The rhythmic beeping of the monitors calms him the smallest bit, it reminds him that Sam’s still alive.
Bucky wonders if he’ll ever wake up. The doctors say he’s stable, but they still aren’t all sure what happened, and it’s more of a waiting game than anything.
There was a cookout.
Bucky remembers the last time he saw Sam, the late summer sun shining and his smile absolutely beaming. He’d invited Bucky to a cookout for his nephew’s birthday, and who was Bucky to say no to that? Not that he’d ever say no to Sam— not really, anyways.
So he went. He mingled. He had fun. And when he’s with Sam, when he’s with Sam’s family, he feels more at home than he has since the war. There’s kids running around playing, adults gossiping, and it suddenly feels like a life he can be content with again. Here, no one treats him like some reactive fighting dog, they treat him like a person. Maybe that’s Sam’s doing— maybe he told everyone to be on good behavior when Bucky visits, but Bucky can’t help but think this is just how Sam’s family is. They’re like him— good.
They’re good.
He’d left early the next morning for a rally, but slept on Sam’s couch that night. He remembers Sam dozing off while they watched a movie, his head falling gently on Bucky’s more organic shoulder. A part of him had wanted to stay like that, but he’d known better. He woke Sam up, told him to go to bed. Made himself comfortable.
He’d left before Sam woke up the next morning.
The last time he saw Sam before this mess, his eyes were half-lidded with sleep and he’d hugged him. Told him goodnight.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Bucky wants this night to end.
So he stays. Day in and day out he stays by Sam’s side, because it’s not like there’s anyone out there who’d miss him. Sure, he gets a few angry government calls. Apparently a few men in suits think he owes the nation an appearance to tell everyone that Sam is okay and recovering, but he isn’t going to do that. Bucky’s only obligation, as far as he’s concerned, is to Sam.
Sometimes Joaquin’s there. He brings Bucky food and he eats it, only so Joaquin doesn’t worry more than he already is. Bucky can see it in the kid’s face, and he knows— knows— that he’s seen far too much to be so young. But maybe Bucky’s just cynical.
Day in and day out. Every night.
Bucky can stay awake far longer than the average person, if he really tries to. But even super soldiers doze off sometimes.
The nightmares aren’t the same ones they used to be. It’s all Sam, it’s all ever Sam.
That is, of course, until Sam wakes up.