Chapter Text
Bucky Barnes woke up in a cold sweat, haunted by lost memories. By blurry faces and inaudible voices. Haunted by things that slipped just out of his grasp, things he couldn’t seem to remember. Haunted by what he now knows he has done, and what he could do. Haunted by a boy with big, brown eyes whose name he repeatedly fails to remember.
He gasped, clutching the linen sheets of he and Steve’s bed. Steve woke up, immediately feeling the disturbance. His face scrunched with worry when he saw Bucky’s distress. “Buck?” His voice echoed into the darkness. Bucky could barely see the outline of him against the moonlight peeking through their bedroom window. He heard the rustling of covers as Steve drew closer. “Hey, hey, Bucky. It’s okay. It was just another nightmare. It’s okay.” He said, using that same calming tone he would always do when Bucky was distressed. It was a light and soothing one, almost like a hum of reassurance.
Bucky swallowed a breath, desperately clamping down the fear that had begun to rise in his throat. He’d dreamed of the boy again. He couldn’t remember his name. Why couldn’t he ever remember his name? Steve scooted closer to him, his movements slow and steady as to not spook the soldier. “Is it alright if I touch you?” he asked. Bucky nodded slowly in return. He didn’t ever admit it, but he always appreciated Steve’s unwavering sense of calm. He especially appreciated it now, in the form of strong arms wrapping around him, pulling him closer.
“You want to talk about it?” Steve’s voice was low and soft, his breath muffled from where it was pressed against Bucky’s hair. He shook his head. No, he did not want to talk about it. Talking about it only made the frustration of not being able to remember worse. He could never remember the important things. God, why could he never remember the important things? He couldn’t remember most of before HYDRA, what it was like with Steve. He couldn’t remember his kills, never did any details stay with him. Most of all, he couldn’t remember the boy with brown eyes.
Steve simply held Bucky for what felt like ages. Before long, Bucky’s heartbeat had steadied, his breathing normal again. He couldn’t go back to sleep though. He never could after the nightmares. It was 3:45 am. Steve could still get some sleep, even if Bucky couldn’t. “I’m going to go down to the gym.” I’m going to run and hide behind punches and weights again. “Go back to sleep, Stevie. You need it.” Don’t follow me, I feel guilty enough already for waking you up.
Steve’s brow furrowed, but he knew better than to argue with Bucky when he got like this. It had been 5 years since he was saved from HYDRA’s clutches. 5 years, and he still had bad days, moments when Steve just had to read between the lines and understand when to leave him alone. When it was better not to push or pry. Bucky carefully shrugged Steve’s arms off of him, the bed dipping as he quietly slipped away. Steve didn’t fight him, but he did immediately feel the cold air filling the spot Bucky had been. Bucky leaned over, leaving a soft kiss on Steve’s forehead before speaking in the quiet night, “Rest.” Before Steve could even open his mouth to say bye, Bucky had already quietly exited the room.
The sound of Bucky’s fists colliding with the red punching bag echoed through the silent room. His knuckles had already began to sting, but he couldn’t seem to care. He didn’t have to hold back on these bags. It wouldn’t break thanks to Starks tech. Even if Bucky despised the man, he was decent at thinking up ideas. All Steve had needed to do was tell the man he accidentally broke one of the bags, and Tony got quickly whipped up a few bags designed to withstand super soldier strength. It came in handy, times like this when Bucky couldn’t care to pull his punches.
The boy’s face kept appearing in his dreams. Whether the dream was of the table, or the training room, or the chair, or his first kill. His face was everywhere. It had gotten better, at least that’s what he had thought. He had stopped dreaming of the boy. Had stopped getting a split second of panic when he saw a kid on the street with curly brown hair. So why had it returned? Why was the boy reappearing in his dreams again? Bucky didn’t know. Maybe it was his self conscious telling him something.
He wondered where the boy was now. Was he still trapped, in HYDRA’s clutches? He hadn’t been in the last facility they’d ambushed. Had the boy escaped? And if he had, was he somewhere safe? With people who could help him? Bucky wondered and wondered as his fists continued to smack against the punching bag. All he could hope was that the boy was far, far away from HYDRA.
🕸️🕷️🕸️
The Spider stared, unblinking past the man in front of him, his handler. The Spider had a new mission, a new hit. A file was given that morning on the man, a worker at SI in the R&D department. He had a wife and a baby. He was 27. The Spider did not ask why the hit was being ordered. It did not ask anything, let alone speak at all. He was an Asset. Assets do not feel. Assets do not speak. Assets do not act on their own. “Ты должен быть осторожен. Сделай так, чтобы это выглядело как несчастный случай.”
(You are to be discreet. Make it look like an accident.)
The Spider knew what was coming next. It waited for the words to be uttered. The same words that would be uttered before every mission for the past 6 years since The Spider began going on missions.
“Фонарь на веранде. Терминал. Пасмурно. Полый. Катализатор. Нить. Падение.”
(Porchlight. Terminal. Overcast. Hollow. Catalyst. Thread. Fall.)
With every word uttered, speaking in steeled over Russian, The Spider felt its consciousness edging, slipping into the soldier they had created it to be.
Slowly.
Slowly.
With each syllable spoken,
The brown eyed teen slipped down,
Down,
Down,
Replaced by the cold, calculated killer.
“Статус.”
(Status.)
.
.
.
“Готов подчиняться.”
(Ready to comply.)
The Spider watched from the rooftop as the man began to get in the cab, soon beginning to drive off. It was ordered to make the mans death seem as though it was an accident.
The Spider could do that.
The man would not suspect a thing. The driver’s death would further make it seem like an accident. The Spider was to shoot a bullet into the tire of the cab. It had hacked into the traffic lights earlier to ensure that 2 lights would be green simultaneously. This was to occur 3 lights down from The Spiders current location.
The Spider carefully took out its gun, a .300 Blackout with a suppressor. The bullets were specially made to be as small as possible while still causing a substantial amount of damage. It did not ask where HYDRA acquired such high tech bullets. The Spider was an asset. Assets do not ask questions.
The Spider peered into the scope, watching as the man talked on the phone. He angled the gun till he had a clear shot of the cab's tires. The Spider waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The light stayed green.
The other light turned green.
The Spider evened out its breathing, holding it slightly before aiming at the front tires. It pulled the trigger. The bullet whizzed through the air, The Spider could hear when the mechanics in the gun had triggered. Could hear when the sear dropped out of the way, releasing the spring that held back the firing pin. Could hear when the firing pin hit the bullets primer, igniting the gunpowder. Even with it’s senses dulled to toleration with the mask on, it could still hear those small, micromovements.
The bullet hit home just in time to slow the cab, causing it to spin out. It was t-boned by a car, deploying the airbags on both cars. The crash made a loud sound that bounced off of the skyscrapers surrounding the road until it made its way to The Spider's ears. The gun barrel was hot and smoking as he zoomed in the scope on the man. He sustained severe injuries, and it could tell simply by looking that the man was dead.
The Spider slowly put away his gun, sealing it back in the case, one designed to look like an instrument case. It made its way to the rooftop doors, pulling its hood up. The Spiders' work here was done. As the spider made its way down from the building, it passed a postcard on a rack of New York. The Spider didn’t know why it took the postcard. The Spider was an asset. Assets weren’t supposed to feel. Due to this reasoning, The Spider denied the fact that it felt something about the city made him think of a life outside of HYDRA. The Spider thought he would have liked to visit the city outside of a mission.
❄️🦾❄️
When Bucky walked into the common room for lunch, most of everyone was already there. Clint was jabbering on about something with Natalia, and Steve was helping whip something up for everyone again with the help of Sam. Thor was… doing whatever it was he did, and Bruce was quietly reading some sciency-looking book. It was a normal day. If you didn’t account for the fact that Stark was out of his lab. That was unusual.
Bucky wasn’t really paying him much attention, but something about what he was saying caught his attention for some reason. He seemed to be discussing something about SI and Pepper with Rhodey. “Yeah, no.. Pepper just seems stressed. Said the morale in the R&D lab is low because one of the workers died in an accident yesterday. Apparently his cab was t-boned because the stop lights malfunctioned.”
Bucky had a bad feeling in his gut. Like something was… off, about that whole sentence. His eyes swept over the room. Nat had paused. She must have been listening in too when she heard Tony’s tone. Her gaze slowly connected with his. She felt it too. The weirdness of it all. New York’s traffic lights didn’t just ‘malfunction’. They never had. He didn’t know why, but he got the sense that there were pieces missing in that story. She felt it too, the way she got this strange feeling in her bones. Like her brain knew something was completely wrong about it all. He raised a brow, and she narrowed her eyes before holding up a hand to Clint who had still been jabbering away like an idiot on a sugar-rush.
“Tony.. do you mind if I see the footage?” she asked, and the whole room seemed to pause. Steve looked up from the stove. Clint's eyes shifted to Tony, Rhodey, and Natalia. Bruce set down his book. Thor… well, he just kept doing Thor things, blissfully unaware of the sudden stillness. Nat didn’t usually take interest in things like this. Didn’t usually invite herself in conversations at all.
Not unless she felt something was off about it.
Tony, feeling how everyone seemed to hold their breath, slowly nodded his head. “I have it.” he said, asking F.R.D.A.Y to pull up the videotape of the accident. “Of course.” the AI’s voice rang through the speakers before a blue hologram the size of a small flatscreen TV appeared before them all. Everyone's attention turned to the video.
It played, and they could all see a cab driving down the busy roads of New York. It stopped once reaching the light, which was currently red. Maybe 2 minutes passed, and the traffic seemed to slow slightly, which was strange but not unheard of. The light turned green and the cab lurched forward. Suddenly, a small white car came zooming down the road, not stopping in time for the cab. They collided, and there was a smashing sound of metal against metal that hurt Bucky’s ears even through the lowered speaker audio. It seemed like a relatively normal crash to the naked eye.
Bucky still felt something wasn’t adding up.
“Rewind.” He said, earning a few surprised glances from the others. It wasn’t often he spoke, so it momentarily drew a few looks. F.R.I.D.A.Y rewinded, and this time, Bucky noticed something new.
The cab seemed to start spinning out before it was t-boned. It was timed so perfectly, you would have needed to be taught to find those little fine details to notice. Bucky noticed. Nat noticed. “Again.” He said, and the video replayed again. “Pause.” Natalia said right before the collision. There was a small blur on the screen. Right before the cab even started spinning out.
“There.”
F.R.I.D.A.Y zoomed in on the image, and everyone seemed to lean forward in their seats. The room was filled with silent tension as they all tried to decipher what in the world that was. “It could just be a bird?” Clint suggested with an unsure, uninterested shrug.
“No, there would be wings. That’s something moving fast directly at the cab's tire.” Steve said, looking at it closely. He always did pay attention to detail, being an artist and all. Bruce nodded, agreeing with him. “It’s too small for any bird I know of.” he told them, only further backing the point that it was not, in fact, a bird.
“F.R.I, clear up the image for me sweetheart.” Tony instructed, and everyone watched as the AI slowly made the image cleaner. More identifiable. They could see it clearly now. That wasn’t a bird at all. No, that was a bullet.
“Is that a bullet?” Clint asked. He always asked the obvious questions. Absolute knucklehead. “Yes, Clint, that is a bullet.” Sam sighed, looking slightly annoyed as usual by Barton’s blondie habits. It didn't make sense why Sam called them that though, Clint wasn’t blonde. Bucky didn’t ask.
“I’ve never seen a bullet like that.” Rhodey spoke skeptically, his eyes narrowing. It was definitely strange. Silver and round and smaller than a 22 L.R, but from the speed and angle it was moving from, it had to have been shot by a rifle.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y, can you get us a clear visual of the shooter?” Natalia asked. Of course, it was Nat though, so she more demanded or stated it than really asked. “Of course Natasha.” The AI said before beginning to jump over different city cameras before stopping on one with the best viewpoint of the shooter.
As she zoomed in and cleared the image, Bucky’s heart seemed to cease all movement. For 5 years, he has been haunted by a boy. A boy with curly brown hair and big brown eyes. For 5 years, Bucky has never seen this boy since the day he escaped without him. On the screen there was a figure. A figure with a dark jacket and a gun. A figure with a mask eerily similar to the one that he remembered wearing. A figure with big, brown eyes. For 5 years, the name of the boy continued to drift further and further away from Bucky. For the first time in 5 years, he managed to catch up to it.
“Pyotr.”