The Finding of Lost Time - Chapter 4 - PyrophobicDragon (2024)

Chapter Text

“Steve.”

“Yeah, Buck?” Steve asked absently.

Bucky looked up at him over the top of his book. “What’s the longest amount of time I’ve been awake for the last seventy years?”

Steve set down his papers and pen. “Huh,” he said. He thought he had to think about it, but he really didn’t. “Forty-two days.” That was with the spiderlings. His two-three month estimate when he brought it up was…overly generous.

“That’s not a long time,” Bucky said, meditatively. “Every day that passes marks the longest I’ve been awake since 1944. Isn’t that f*cked up?”

“Yeah. f*cked up.” Steve knocked their feet together. “How’s it? Returning to the land of the living?”

“Eh, could be better.” But then Bucky added, softer, more genuine: “I…I like being able to talk to you.”

Steve felt a lump in his throat. “I like it too,” he said. “Goddammit, Buck, I—I missed you.”

“I missed you too. Even though you were right there, and I couldn’t remember—still can’t, really—I missed you.” Bucky offered him a small, melancholy smile.

Steve had roughed it out, at some point in the last couple of days. Over fifty years, he’d been awake for anywhere between three days to three weeks at a time, about fifty to sixty times—once a year, sometimes two. He’d been conscious for two or almost three months, four or five times, but those were outliers. Generous average of three weeks, multiplied by generous estimation of sixty times, divided by fifty-two weeks in a year—

A little under three and a half years.

In fifty years, he’d been awake for three and a half years.

He had gone into the ice as a twenty-five-year-old, and now, standing here, in 2014 (Jesus, he couldn’t get over that, twenty-f*cking-four-teen, that was future years, that was a far-off—fifty years in the future, they were ninety-six and ninety-seven years old) he was essentially a twenty-nine-year-old for all the time he spent conscious in the last seventy years. Bucky was essentially in the same boat, though he’d spent more time awake in the twenty years that he’d—that he’d been tortured. So even though he was usually alone for those longer two-month stints, their averages were probably about the same. Twenty-nine and thirty, born in 1917 and 1918.

“We’re old,” said Bucky.

“You’re old,” Steve said. “You’re probably thirty, and I’m still in my twenties. Probably.”

“Jesus. The amount of times you bring up our whole one-year age difference, it’s enough to make a guy think you get off on it,” Bucky muttered, flipping a page in his book.

“Maybe I do, daddy,” Steve said, batting his eyelashes exaggeratedly, like he was one of the girls who used to try and get Bucky to take them home after a dance or two for a very different kind of tango; Steve used to sit there and seethe as Bucky laughed and flirted with them and sent them home feeling like they got something out of him that they didn’t. Bucky was loyal, even when Steve told him he didn’t have to be, because Steve said that but he didn’t mean it one bit, and obviously Bucky knew that. It wasn’t like Steve did a good job of hiding his jealousy, getting all het up every time a broad got too close to Bucky.

Part of him thought that Bucky might like him calling him that—after all, they’ve done weirder things in sex, both in the past and in the future they found themselves living in—but Bucky looked up at him and then nearly fell off the couch laughing. “God Almighty, Steve, I dare you to call me that in front of Stark.”

“Stark would never let me live it down,” Steve said, making a face, but he was thinking about it—it might be worth it, just to see the gobsmacked look on Stark’s face. “You really dare me?”

“You don’t have to,” Bucky said, but he was frowning in a way that meant he was thinking about saying something.

“Spit it out, whatever it is,” Steve said.

“It’s just—I was gonna say. It’d be okay, because he’d make fun of us but he wouldn’t air our business out to anyone else.” He looked at Steve, distant and confused. “I…do we trust them?”

Steve locked their ankles together. “I think we do,” he said softly. “At the very least, they’re our teammates. We trust them to have our back in battle, right? They’ve proven themselves in that.”

Bucky nodded slowly, but he was clearly unsatisfied.

“Bruce is nice,” Steve pointed out. “And I like Sam, even if you don’t, for whatever reason.”

“He’s too much your type,” Bucky mumbled. “Dark hair, pretty smile, won’t tolerate bullsh*t.”

“Really? That’s why you don’t like him?” Steve found himself grinning at Bucky. “Feels like I should be the one worried ‘bout you stepping out on me, if you’re callin’ Sam’s smile pretty.”

“I learned my lesson with the first Captain America, I ain’t messing around with another.”

Steve laughed, then continued with, “Barton is nice,” though they didn’t see much of him; he seemed to be busy with trying to take care of the whole exploded-building situation, which Steve still felt a little guilty for, even though Barton assured them several times that it wasn’t their fault. “I know you like Natasha, now that we figured her out. And Stark is—” Complicated. Bucky felt real guilty over his parents’ deaths, though Stark seemed to be dealing with it in the time-honored tradition of pretending nothing was wrong, but Stark’s workshop was like catnip to Bucky, and Stark seemed to actively enjoy having someone to show off to.

“Giving me far more kindness than I’m due,” Bucky completed Steve’s sentence before he could.

Steve unlocked their ankles long enough to tap Bucky on the knee with his heel, but he didn’t want to contradict Bucky’s feelings, even though he disagreed. “I’d say pretty damn welcoming towards both of us,” he said. “Even if he talks too damn much and I don’t get half of what he says.”

“They’re our—team, I guess,” Bucky said. “They’re no Howlies, but. They’ll do.”

Steve felt a familiar twinge of loss in his chest, but he smiled through it. “They’ll do,” he agreed.

“If they’re helping us out with HYDRA,” Bucky licked his lips. “Should we tell them?”

The twinge was drowned out by his heart hammering, so strong and loud that he could hear it pulsing in his ears. “About—?” He didn’t need to finish the question, he knew what Bucky was talking about. He took a deep, steadying breath, and part of him wanted to laugh—ten years ago, he could only dream about having a heart beating this loud, a breath that he could take so deep.

Bucky nodded. “It’s up to you, really.” His eyes dropped down to his book as his thumb worried at one corner. “I mean. It’s a lot about you. I just had to show up to the party and—” his lip curled up. “Have fun.”

“Don’t,” Steve growled, forgetting all of Sam’s advice about not invalidating or shutting down the others’ feelings. “It wasn’t fun for you. They—they screwed you over just as much as they did me.”

“I can absolutely say that’s not true.” Bucky let out a wet, broken laugh. “Breeding you like a dog was the best part of my last seventy years.”

“Wasn’t like it was your choice—” Steve tried to argue.

“I probably woulda done it anyways, if I had the mind, and besides, the consequences were always gonna be harsher on you. That’s the way life goes, ever since Adam and Eve.” He shrugged broadly, like it didn’t matter, but Steve could see in the way he couldn’t look straight at him that it did matter, it mattered a helluvalot.

“Well, you didn’t have the mind, you didn’t have a choice. And the consequences are f*cking you over now, too; you feel guilty over what you did even though it wasn’t you,” Steve said, a little more accusingly than he perhaps ought to sound.

“And isn’t that the sorry story of the Winter Soldier?” Bucky rolled his eyes. “Sure, maybe I wasn’t all there. But it was still me what did it. Can’t we agree to disagree?”

Steve let out a deep, aggravated sigh. “All right. Whatever. But I don’t blame you, okay?”

Bucky gave him a look that was part fondness, part pity. “I know,” he said simply. “You never could. You’re too good for me, Rogers.”

Steve just shook his head. “You were the best part of my last seventy years, too. You’ve been the best part of my life since 1918.”

“Good lord.” Bucky leaned forward, reaching out for him. “Get over here, you punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve mumbled against Bucky’s lips.

They kissed, lazily, for several minutes, moving against and with each other until Steve was lying on top of Bucky, head on his chest, while Bucky rubbed a thumb along the back of his neck. His book and Steve’s reading were long forgotten on the coffee table.

“We’ll tell them.” Steve sighed. “They probably ought to know.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” Bucky promised.

“I know,” Steve said.

–

Despite their agreement, it wasn’t really the sort of thing that comes up in normal conversation. Sometimes, when the chatter in Stark’s lab went quiet for a little bit, as the different members of the Avengers found themselves absorbed in their own little tasks, Steve would look around at them and think about just saying it. But he was a much better fighter than he was a talker, so he didn’t.

–

Bucky would sometimes look at Steve, and Steve would have that complicated contemplative look on his face, the one that said he was thinking about just saying f*ck it and charging into the fray, fists swinging. But Steve was a much better fighter than he was a talker, so he would look down at his sketchbook and the expression would slip away.

James Buchanan Barnes used to be a talker, and a fighter, and anything that Steve needed or wanted him to be. Bucky wasn’t, not anymore, maybe not ever again. So he didn’t say anything, even though he longed to take this burden from Steve.

–

“DUM-E, put that damn fire—fire fighter, fire hydrant, fire deleter? What the hell is that thing called again?” Stark said, waving his hand on the air.

“Extinguisher,” Bucky said.

“Thank you! Fire extinguisher, down, now.” The robot Stark was addressing just turned in a slow circle, as if surveying the room. Steve watched as it extended out a few feet and pointed the fire extinguisher at one of Stark’s suits. Stark was still bent over the thing he was working on, too busy yapping to notice the robot’s intent. “Wait, did they even have fire extinguishers when you were alive, Barnes?”

“‘Course they did,” Bucky scoffed. “We didn’t live in the Dark Ages, Stark. You’re supposed to be a genius and you don’t know when fire extinguishers were invented?”

“C’mon, you don’t either—hey! Stop!” Stark leapt out of his stool, running over to DUM-E as the robot did its best to cover Stark’s suit in foam. “sh*tballs, it’s like having a child. J, remind me to double my holiday donation to Planned Parenthood this year.”

Steve didn’t look away from absently doodling a picture of a blocky little robot arm holding a fire extinguisher, but he asked, “They’re still around?”

“Planned Parenthood?” Clint looked up from the card game that was going on; it seemed like they were betting with bits of scrap metal. “They existed back then?”

“Yeah. I remember our priest wrote a letter to the paper about them when they changed their name from the BC…LA? No, the BCFA. He was pretty proud when it got published, went around showing everyone the paper after service.” Steve said. His stomach was doing a funny little twisting thing, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking out along a zipline at the deadly fall stretching down and down and down.

Bucky was no longer watching Stark’s hands. He was looking at Steve, studying his face; Steve had no idea what expression he was making or what Bucky got out of it, but Bucky scoffed, deliberately, and said,

“Hypocritical bastard was also one of the people who asked me if I was gonna send you to Indiana,” and f*ck, that was the perfect opening line, Steve could kiss him. Bucky was so smooth, he was a great talker, and Steve owed him more than he could ever put into words.

Sam was looking up, now, and he was looking between Bucky and Steve. Bruce reorganized his cards in his hands; he was avoiding eye contact as he said, mildly, “That’s the second time I heard you two reference Indiana, but I’m not sure I understand the significance.”

“Bucky had extended family there,” Steve said, watching Bucky’s fist unclench in his lap. He closed his sketchbook and pushed his pencil into the spiral binding to keep it safe. “There was also a training school for—for ladies. Uh. Omegas.” Bucky let out a short, low noise, halfway between a growl and a whimper, and from the set to his jaw Steve thought it was probably involuntary, just instinctual anger. He tore his eyes away from Bucky long enough to sweep it over the rest of the Avengers, who were all watching him, save for Stark, who was looking at a hologram off to the right, fingers flying across the virtual screen.

For a moment, he desperately wished that they would just know, that he wouldn’t have to say it. He didn’t even know why he brought this up, except he did: it seemed—important. To what came next.

“Lots of people—including my own damn father—thought Steve fit the bill of an unfit omega,” Bucky said, his voice low and simmering with anger, and that was the second time he stepped in when Steve struggled to find the right words, and he was so, so grateful.

“I was sickly,” Steve said. “Skinny. Probably wouldn’t live past thirty. And I was a man.” He was smiling now, a humorless little grin. “With me and Bucky accidentally paired up—well, even if Buck had good breeding, it would probably be ruined by mine, and if he knocked me up at some point the kid’ll end up a burden on society like me.” He shrugged, large and loose, and he felt like he was on stage again, in a red-white-and-blue outfit, reading lines out from the back of a tin shield: big, cheesy grin; big, cheesy fist. “What’s a concerned in-law to do? Well, ship me off to a training school in Indiana, where they could fix me up and make sure that the oven door was kept closed.”

There was a long silence. Long enough that Steve wondered if they understood what he was saying, and if he would have to say it more explicitly. People in the future said a lot of things; they were so much more—open, he supposed, though by his standards it was vulgar. He’d never been a prude, necessarily—living out of wedlock with your alpha-slash-illegal-male-lover made you a lot more willing to accept sexual deviancy than other people, and then he joined the USO and the Army and both of those were real sh*tshows, for lack of a better term—but there were words you used in polite company and there words you used when you were trying to get a rise out of your best guy so he’d stop treating you like a broken bird and shove you face-down into the pillow the way you wanted. These days no one even remembered the euphemisms one was supposed to use, they always said what they meant; instead of pairing up it was bonding and instead of my match it was my bondmate, and they could say things like pregnant and abortion freely. He supposed he’d get used to it eventually, but right now he was uncomfortable enough with this whole conversation without looking his teammates in the eye and saying baldly there were people we knew who encouraged Bucky to sterilize me so he couldn't get me pregnant.

Then, Barton said, “Was that even legal?” He sounded a little hysterical, and that’s how Steve knew he got it.

“It was, in Indiana,” Steve said, shrugging.

“And even though it wasn’t in New York,” Bucky said, glaring at the table top, “As his alpha I could force him to go. The laws weren’t really set up for male-male pairs, but if he tried to fight it, the law woulda come down on my side.”

“Dude,” Sam said. “That’s totally f*cked up.”

“You see why I thought the past didn’t have fire extinguishers?” Stark asked, waving his arm in the air wildly. “They didn’t have rights for omegas, and forced sterilization of a mostly-normal guy was legal!” Steve made a face at ‘mostly normal’ while Bucky snickered a little, a smile coming back onto his face, even if his eyes were still dark. “If they didn’t have something as basic as that, how was I supposed to know that they had something as complicated as fire extinguishers?”

Steve huffed out a small laugh, still smiling, because Stark had an excellent point. “You wanna hear something even more f*cked up?” he asked. Underneath the table, Bucky was squeezing his knee.

“What could be more f*cked up than one of my friends almost getting his tubes tied against his will?” Barton asked, and Steve was so flattered that Barton thought of him as his friend he almost forgot what point he was getting to. But he did have a point, and he was riding the high of the absurdity of the conversation, and if he had gotten this far he could go further, so he said,

“How about this: I wish I’d gone and let them do it.”

The pressure on his knee was now hard enough to bruise, but Steve needed that. He wanted to flip his sketchbook open so he had something to doodle on, but he clenched his hands into fists on his lap. His gaze flitted across faces—Stark frozen, facing his hologram still; Clint’s face a stony mask of a sniper; Sam’s sympathetic, listening look; Bruce’s fidgeting—before he landed on Natasha. Her face was neutral but not set, open but not sympathetic, and there was something in her eye that he thought was something close to—understanding. When he made eye contact with her she didn’t quite smile, but her eyes warmed, and it was close enough to but definitively not a smile that he was able to keep looking at her. “They did experiment on me and try to make more serum out of me like we told you. But that’s not enough use to justify having me sitting around, mind intact, for fifty years. But they were obsessed with making an army of super-soldiers. And how do you make more super-soldiers when your serum isn’t working anymore? Well, if have an alpha super-soldier and an omega super-soldier…”

“You breed them together,” Stark said flatly. “Like cattle.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Jesus.”

Steve shrugged, and he was so grateful that Stark said it and that he didn’t have to that he would’ve kissed him if he wasn’t sitting at the other end of a lab bench. “That’s right,” he said, with a serenity that he did not feel.

“Oh god,” Barton said, with feeling, “Please don’t tell me there are little Winter Captains running around in the wild.”

That got Steve to laugh, and Barton’s mask twitched into a pleased little look. “No, there aren’t,” he said. “I got caught—four or five times. I’m not sure.” He could feel his throat closing up; he willed his voice to remain steady. “I never carried for long.”

The first time was a shock. He went completely numb, and he felt ill all the time, and the HYDRA scientists were over the moon, talking over his head in excitement, crowding around a big machine while they waved a device over his flat stomach. And then one day, pain had radiated from his core, and he limped to the bathroom and there was an astounding amount of blood, and HYDRA ran in and shouted and stuck him under the machine and then stuck him full of needles and then they realized that he was no longer with child.

And then it became a f*cked-up routine, something he got used to: the terror, the numbness, the anger and resentment at HYDRA, at the world, at his own body. The knowledge that he was knocked up with Bucky’s child but if he carried all the way then their baby would be born into a life of captivity and tests and brainwashing and torture. The loneliness, because after Bucky did his duty they’d pop him away into cryo but keep Steve awake to be an incubator for the next Fist of HYDRA, and Steve would spend weeks alone in their ten-by-eight cell with nothing but his thoughts and their growing child for company while the animal part of him cried out for his mate. And then—the blessed agony. The angry klaxons. The scientists, rushing in, doing anything and everything they could think of to save the baby, while Steve breathed easier, knowing that the baby was gone and would never have to live under the thumb of HYDRA. Looking at the knot of blood and tissue on a metal tray and thinking, Thank God. I’m sorry. Goodbye.

“When I first go the serum, Dr. Erskine told me one of the potential side effects was sterility,” he said, and he was glad to note that his voice was steadier now. “I don’t know if it really was the serum, or maybe it was stress from—you know.” He gestured vaguely into the air between him and Bucky, as if that would encapsulate everything about being held prisoner by crazy Nazis who routinely torture your lover and send him to kill while using you as a baby factory.

“We can test for that. If you wanted. Fertility, I mean, not stress,” Bruce offered, his voice very small. Steve wondered if his IUD would interfere with that, but when Bruce didn’t say anything further, he realized that he wouldn’t, because the fact that he had an IUD was the sort of information Bruce promised to keep private when they signed the form all the way back then, and he felt a rush of affection for the man.

“Maybe later,” Steve said, but he made a mental note to ask Bruce about it, if only because he was curious about the IUD situation, before he tried to lighten the mood a little with a joke. “You probably don’t need to test for stress. I’ve been maxed out since 1930.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask what happened in 1930,” Stark muttered.

“The depression,” Bucky said in monotone, at the same time Steve said, “I met this guy.”

“f*ck you too, pal.” Bucky scowled, and the hand on his knee stroked him gently before pinching his thigh.

“No thanks, I don’t want to get into trouble,” Steve volleyed back, and that finally cracked through the tight-lipped mask Bucky was wearing and got him to smirk, and Steve chuckled, feeling weirdly untethered, like he was about to float away from the ground and get lost in the sky, after telling the Avengers the truth and then making Bucky laugh—well, not laugh, and not really smile, but a smirk in this situation was as good as a laugh.

“Wow. Thank you for telling us,” Sam said, because goddammit he was a good man—and dammit, he just figured out that Bucky was right again, because Sam was his type: handsome, dark-haired, and a damn good person. “I mean, in the best of circ*mstances that would be an incredibly private thing and I would be honored that you trusted us with that information, but in light of HYDRA f*cking your lives up—just, thanks for letting us know.”

“There’s a non-zero chance we’ll stumble across my frozen ovary in a HYDRA lab somewhere, so I feel like you guys have a right to know,” Steve said lightly.

“I’m more worried about the jars of my spunk they no doubt have stored somewhere,” Bucky said. “If you see a white jar don’t shoot it, ‘kay?” and Steve bit his tongue so he wouldn’t say Yeah, the only place Bucky’s spunk ought to be shot is my face, which he would if they were alone in their apartment; but he and Bucky inadvertently made eye contact and he must have seen the dirty joke on Steve’s face (ha) and they both ended up chuckling, not full blown laughing, not in front of company, but private smiles and stifled giggles.

“You two are so weird,” Stark said.

“It's the depression,” Bucky said.

“As in the economic one or the mental state?” Stark asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said blandly, and Steve laughed out loud this time, leaning over onto Bucky, and Bucky wrapped his left arm around Steve’s waist and squeezed him, dropping his head onto his shoulder briefly before letting him go. Steve didn’t want him to let go. He wanted to be held, so he got to his feet and said, awkwardly,

“Anyways, good talk,” because how the hell were you supposed to follow up telling your—your team about all that? Then Bucky got up as well, and Barton asked,

“Is it too soon to make jokes about Steve getting knocked up?”

“Joke away,” said Steve, and Barton cupped his hand around his mouth as if he were hollering and shouted,

“Use protection!”

Bucky deadpanned, “That’s what the combat gear is for,” before he led Steve out of the lab. As the lab door slid closed, they heard Stark saying,

“Wait, do they f*ck in—”

As soon as they got to the elevator, they collapsed in laughter. Steve’s laugh was edging on hysterical, because the whole situation was funny, it was funny-funny-funny; it was their bad jokes and it was Captain America being secretly an omega and popping out babies for HYDRA but failing at that because he wasn't a good omega and it was them living in the future having to break the news to the folks who took them in after they escaped that the past was far more f*cked up than they could have imagined, it was the constipated look on Sam’s face and the way Stark—Tony, Steve supposed he ought to call the man Tony now—couldn’t look at them and the way Natasha seemed to know, his Ma always said that women were wiser, and she was probably right, because the only person stupid enough to fix up with Steve was a man. He gasped for breath, like he was having an asthma attack all over again; Bucky had stopped laughing, and was wiping his eyes, which were cold and hard, and that was what got Steve to stop laughing, because if Bucky was looking serious then something was up and Steve would never let Bucky fall alone, not again, not ever.

“Four or five, huh?”

Steve’s next breath caught in his throat. “Yeah.”

Bucky looked pained. “I didn’t know you got storked that many times.”

“It seems like a lot of times,” Steve said. “But they were pushing us together once or twice a year for fifty years and I only got knocked up five times optimistically. Looks like your honey’s not that sweet, pal.” And his joke worked, because Bucky still looked a bit like he was sniffing sour milk, but he was rolling his eyes.

“You’re blaming me? Pal, you oughta be blaming the idiots who scooped out half of your eggs and asked me to make do with the other half.”

“You sure made do,” said Steve.

They rode the elevator in silence. When they reached their floor, Bucky stepped out, then hesitated.

“Will you—tell me something else about that whole…mess?”

Steve frowned. “What do you want to know?”

“No specific questions. Just.” Bucky gestured vaguely, and then shrugged. “How you felt. If you were okay. Things I don’t know. Or wouldn’t remember even if I was there to see them.”

Steve thought about it. Then, he told him, “If I started showing, I’d’ve taken drastic measures to make sure the kid wouldn’t be born into captivity.”

“How would you’ve done it?” Bucky asked. No judgment, just curiosity, and Steve loved, loved, loved him, the way the ocean loved the moon: helplessly, permanently, inexorably.

“I dunno,” he said. “But I would’ve found a way. Broken out and found a bottle of bleach and drunk it. Steal a gun, shoot myself in the stomach. I thought about asking you to punch me in the breadbasket with your metal arm, but that would’ve been a pretty last resort. They would have been mad at you if I asked you to do that.” He had thought about it so much. Laid on that stupid little cot staring at the blank ceiling wondering if this was the time he would make it past the three month mark. If this time, his flat stomach would become soft and rounded, like the women at home who glowed with happiness, hugged their tummies, blushed under excited praise at the upcoming child. If this time, he would have to take matters into his own hand to make sure that HYDRA’s plan for a super-soldier army was stopped before it even began.

“You thought about it a lot,” Bucky observed, and his voice was bleak.

“Not much else to do but think.” Steve shrugged, because it turned out he didn’t have to do anything about it but think.

Bucky just nodded. The elevator arrived at their floor. Before they stepped out, Bucky took his hand and held on.

–

There was no longer a patch of mold on the ceiling.

He examined the corner where the patch of mold used to be. It had started from the corner and fanned outwards, like mushrooms on dead trees in France, the ones that were frilled and had little lines that radiated outwards, like ripples in a pond. Falsworth had dared him to eat it, ‘cause it probably wouldn’t make him sick even if it were poisonous, and he had seriously considered it, because he was damn hungry all the time, because his new body burned through fuel like a fully-stoked furnace but he wasn’t going to let himself eat through all of their rations, not when drop points were unreliable at best and they wouldn’t take food from the hungry mouths of the French people. Dernier, Bucky, and Morita were all firmly against him eating it, though, and Gabe and Dum-Dum were firmly on the side of Dernier who was French, after all, and probably knew best, and so he had given up, though he glanced longingly at the mushroom until Bucky cuffed the back of his head and said don’t be f*cking stupid, Rogers, just cuz a eating a stick won’t hurt you don’t mean you should do it. Steve had half a mind to do it anyways, just to spite Bucky after that smart remark, but then Bucky was trying to subtly give him his chocolate bar and his biscuits from those goddamn K-rations they practically lived off of and Steve had to hastily fend him off because, one, Bucky was hungry too, the stupid K-rations weren’t enough food for any of them, and two, it was such a goddamn alpha move to try and provide food to their omega and it was not only suspicious as hell for him to do that but also annoyed the sh*t out of Steve.

They fought over that, hissing angrily at each other about half as loudly as they dared. Bucky thought that no one would look at Captain America and think omega so they could risk Bucky pretending to be a childhood friend who was just used to looking out for him; Steve thought that Bucky was being condescending and following his animal instincts way too far; they may be in war but they were civilized men and Bucky could control his alpha-ness, goddammit.

In the end it was all a moot point. Bucky kept trying to feed Steve and Steve kept refusing it, because no matter what or where they were they were goddamn stupid for each other.

Like here and now.

Lying in a tiny cot, his feet hanging off the edge, staring at the ceiling of an eight-by-ten white-walled prison cell, he couldn’t really be happy but he was happier than he was at all other times because Bucky was lying on top of him, cheek resting against his chest. At least if Bucky was here, he wasn’t out there doing missions, or getting—recalibrated, or mind-wiped, or tortured.

Bucky was silent, because he always was these days, at least when he wasn’t giving Steve his mission reports when he came back after leaving to do the things that HYDRA forced him to do; silent and still, because of the way HYDRA had twisted him into their killing machine. And Steve was quiet, too, because he didn’t—couldn’t talk to Bucky.

What could you talk about to your sweetheart, when he couldn’t remember anything and your captors would hurt him if you tried to talk to him about the past, when even calling him by his name put them on thin f*cking ice? What was there to talk about when he was more animal than human, when you were two grown men trapped in an eight-by-ten room with a single cot? When your sweetheart had been so hurt and beaten and broken that he couldn’t even remember that he was a f*cking person?

God almighty, Steve missed Bucky. He missed talking to him. It felt like the height of absurdity to complain about this, but—

He was goddamn bored.

He was bored out of his skull.

All he and Bucky did was always the same routine: get creatively tortured, get mission reports, take a shower, have sex, lie next to each other until it was time to get tortured or get put into heat or get put into cryo again. And Steve was goddamn bored, and Bucky was right here with him, but that meant nothing, and even the sex was boring even if it was still pretty good, and the torture and knowing that Bucky had been twisted into this silent, still, half-alive version of himself was sh*tty but right now he was angry at the fact that he was bored and angry at the fact that he could be angry at being bored when it was the absolute least of his concerns.

He ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Both of their hair was kept long, though Steve tried to keep his combed back, away from his face, running wet hands through it though a few stubborn strands always escaped containment. He sort of liked Bucky’s long hair. He liked getting his fingers in it, liked rubbing Bucky’s scalp, except for the callous inhumanity of the fact that Bucky wasn’t even worth a haircut. He got shaved, because a beard would interfere with the mask, but no haircut. He ran a hand through Bucky’s hair and thought about hairstyles because he was bored and wished that he had something to talk to Bucky about.

Bucky let out a sigh that scattered across Steve’s bare chest, leaving the patch that it ghosted across cold and bereft. His eyelashes fluttered against Steve’s skin.

“Did I become an Asset because of you?”

Steve’s heart seized.

He breathed, once, twice, shallow shuddering breaths. And he whispered the truth.

“Yeah.”

Bucky shifted against him, nuzzling into his chest, and Steve stared up at the ceiling, feeling his eyes growing hot at how much he f*cked up Bucky’s life, but he didn’t cry.

“Then it’s not so bad,” Bucky whispered.

And Steve wished for the numbness of boredom.

–

Bucky lay with his head on Steve’s lap, his face buried in Steve’s abdomen. He breathed slowly through his nose. It was late in the evening, which meant that Steve smelled more like his natural scent, which was warm and soft and musky and always made Bucky want to burrow himself in him and stay there forever. He had his metal hand tucked up next to his chin because Steve was using him to prop up his book, the corner of it situated in the crook of the thumb and forefinger. He dozed, basking in Steve’s scent, Steve’s warmth, Steve’s steady breathing pushing out and drawing in his belly.

His perfect afternoon was quickly ruined by several loud, sharp knocks.

“There’s someone at the door, Buck. Let me up,” Steve said, as if Bucky didn’t have ears.

“Don’t see how that’s my problem,” Bucky mumbled.

Steve huffed a laugh. “Come on, Buck.” He shifted to push Bucky off of him, but Bucky wrapped his arms around his middle and hung on stubbornly. “Let go of me!”

“No.”

“You jerk, they’re gonna think we’re ignoring them.”

“We are,” Bucky said lazily. “Whatever they’re selling I ain’t buying. I’m just trying to have a nice time with my sweetheart.”

Someone rapped on the door, harder; this wasn’t like in Brooklyn, or in the war, when they could just pretend they weren’t in, and make up some vague excuse about having been on a walk. They rarely left their apartment, and if they did, JARVIS would take note of it. The person on the other side absolutely knew they were in here.

Steve let out a deep sigh and stopped struggling, and Bucky felt smug as Steve wrapped his arms around him, tugging gently. Bucky went willingly, letting himself get drawn upwards into a kiss. He pressed closer, his eyes falling shut as he did his level best to taste every inch of Steve's tongue.

Then, Steve shoved him off his lap and onto the floor.

“You no-good low-down rotten cheater!” Bucky shouted at him as Steve hopped over the back of the couch nimbly, laughing as he bolted for the door.

“You know I fight smart,” Steve said, smirking at him.

“Amnesia, you asshole!” He said that, but he did know. He didn’t know what street he grew up on or how many siblings he had or his mom's name but he knew Steve.

Steve waited, his hand on the doorknob, for Bucky to get to his feet, laughter in his eyes. Bucky was grinning, all of his teeth showing, something giddy and bright rising in his chest. He could volley insults back and forth with Steve, just like breathing; if he stopped and thought about it too much, the effort would feel overwhelming, but if he didn’t, he could make Steve laugh. He could make Steve smile, and relax, and he could feel a little more like James Buchanan Barnes and a little less like the Asset.

When he dreamed of this, laughter and freedom, slumbering alone in ice for months and years at a time, his dreams fractured as his mind, there was a lot more warm sun and sand and there was a lot less people interrupting him, making demands of Steve’s time and attention. At least the amount of Steve was the same between his dreams and reality.

Steve opened the door, revealing a bored-looking Agent Hill.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Agent,” Steve said, faux-polite as ever, even though his mask has slipped enough times that most people understood that it was a mask; that underneath the golden hair and blue eyes was an angry little spitfire who had crawled through hell and got back up still swinging.

“Suspicious activity near an old base up in Canada, one in South Carolina, and updated results on the Siberia survey,” she said, holding out a folder. Steve took it with a nod of thanks, and Bucky sidled up behind him, glowering at her. She only gave him an amused look and added, “Sorry to interrupt whatever you were doing,” and he knew she thought they’d been sexing.

Bucky wanted to drape himself over Steve, rub his chin into the crook of his shoulder, put a possessive hand on his hip. It was still difficult to touch Steve in front of other people. They could flirt, now, if they were distracted enough or running on enough adrenaline or got into the rhythm of it enough, because all of their flirting was just bickering, anyways, or vice-versa. But touching was—intimate. Private. Just for him and Steve.

Maria Hill was an alpha. She didn’t bother hiding her designation. Not a lot of people did, in this modern age. She was an alpha, and she was in front of Steve, and Bucky wanted to touch Steve, mark his claim on him, say I know he’s the prettiest goddamn omega the world has ever seen but he’s taken, he’s mine, he’s mine, you can’t take him.

He blinked when the door closed. “She left, Buck,” Steve said, torn between amused and worried, and Bucky grabbed him by his itty-bitty waist and spun him around, planting one right on his lips. Steve laughed at him, and Bucky pouted, pressing in closer, nuzzling along his jaw and throat as Steve said, “I was a little worried you were having a flashback. I shoulda known you were just being jealous.”

“Can’t blame me for being jealous. I got myself the prettiest doll in the world, sweet as sugar with curves like a pin-up,” Bucky cooed.

“You flirt,” Steve said affectionately, and made his way back to the couch with Bucky hanging off of him, planting kisses on his cheekbones, his ears, his nose.

This time, Bucky sat down next to Steve, patting his lap. “Wanna sit on my lap, sweetheart?” he purred. “C’mon, best seat in the house.”

“You’re clingy today,” Steve huffed, but no matter how much he pretended not to like it Bucky had his goddamn number, and he knew the scarlet cheeks were out of shy pleasure, not true embarrassment. Steve never much liked being doted on, except for the fact that he did, but he didn’t think he ought to like it as much as he did. He railed against his own desires as hard as he fought against anything else in life, and Bucky loved it, just another contradiction that wove the tangled web of Steven Grant Rogers, the man with a heart too strong to beat and a soul too big for his body and a stubborn streak too wide for his deathwish.

“I’m feeling good,” Bucky told Steve, because Steve liked it when Bucky felt good. Indeed, Steve rewarded him with a sugar-sweet smile and a peck on the cheek and then he sat in Bucky’s lap, letting Bucky wind an arm around his waist as he held up the papers for both of them to read.

After a few minutes of reading, Bucky frowned at a map of a mountain range. “We’ve been there before.”

“Sulphur Mountain?” Steve frowned. “When do you mean?”

Bucky closed his eyes, trying to find the memory, like feeling a string tickling your fingers that you know leads somewhere but unable to catch it and drag it towards you. He caught onto the edge of it, and his heart lurched. “We were in a cable car. You were angry at me over—over something, so you were ignoring me. I wanted to get closer, but I didn’t.” As he spoke, the memory became sharper, like he was drawing it into focus. He could feel the chill radiating off of the glass window. The humming of the gondola. The endless forest of pine, stretching out down below. Steve had been standing at the opposite corner, staring out the window, resolutely ignoring him in favor of looking at the view. The Asset hadn’t been able to appreciate the view. Aesthetic appreciation was beyond an Asset.

But the Asset did long for Steve. It longed to go over there and take him into its arms. It longed to hold him, to kneel at his feet, to beg for forgiveness. But it had known enough to stay away. Steve was angry, and it couldn’t remember why, but it knew it deserved it.

“Buck?” Steve was saying his name. Bucky looked at him mutely. Steve’s eyes gentled. “That never happened.”

Bucky swallowed. “Really?” his voice was small, and he hated himself for doubting Steve. If he couldn’t trust Steve, then who could he trust?

“Yeah. I’ve never been to Canada,” Steve said.

“Good to know.” Bucky pressed his face into Steve’s shoulder. It had felt so real. Steve had been right there—

But he let that vision go.

–

Steve had been there on a lot of his missions.

Maybe all of them.

It was easy to miss him, after all, though that seemed strange to Bucky, who was always—always, even when he didn't know what he was looking for—looking for him in a crowd, who felt like it ought to be his right to know where Steve was at all times, to be able to make sure he was safe and well and happy. But he was the Asset, and the Asset didn’t have any rights.

But the Asset caught the flashes of gold hair in crowds. Saw a pair of sky-blue ice-blue ocean-blue eyes lock onto his, briefly, before they slid away. Saw him as a pair of hands, in the curve of a back.

Sometimes Steve would be there, as a complete whole. Not just a glimpse. A crowd running, parting around a single body standing still in a sea, watching him. Sitting in a train window, looking out at the Asset as it rumbled past. Sitting in a booth in a restaurant, in a wool uniform, hat perched awkwardly on his big head.

And then—

Sometimes he would be right besides the Asset. A hand on a shoulder, warm and steadying as it lined up a shot. Sitting in the corner of a sniper nest, watching the Asset, close enough that it could reach out and touch him. It never moved, it never looked directly at him; it did not want its handlers knowing that Steve was there. It was afraid of what they would do to Steve, how they would try to get rid of him.

Steve would smile and move so he was standing in the Asset’s line of sight. So the Asset could see him better, even though it couldn’t so much as flicker the eyes over to him.

The Asset didn’t know who he was.

But the Asset knew it—

It—

It—

An Asset did not know love.

–

Dinner was short ribs with horseradish, like the ones they used to get from Bucky’s supervisor's wife who always worried about two bachelor boys living alone together. She tried at first to encourage Bucky to take her daughter out, but Bucky had politely refused; he couldn’t mix business with pleasure, and his Ma wouldn’t let him convert anyways. He was good with feel-good excuses back then, and even after he turned her offer down she had laughed and pressed containers of short ribs and matzo ball soup into his hands whenever she swung by the garage. He and Steve had always done their best to return the favor with loaves of Steve’s Ma’s soda bread so they wouldn’t have to return the plate empty.

Bucky was remembering a lot of Brooklyn, these days. It came in a cloudy sky, in a dimly-lit deli, in the smell of coffee in the morning. He got bits of the war, too, but only a few, mostly from the later days when they ran with the Howlies, and he got bits of HYDRA in his screaming nightmares that he asked Steve about as they sat up in bed, arms and legs tangled together. But Brooklyn came back quicker than the rest, and he figured that it was because his memories of Brooklyn were so tied up in Steve. He knew Steve, which meant he knew their history, which meant he knew Brooklyn.

He couldn’t remember his first day at school or when his little siblings were born. But he could remember dirty alleys he pulled Steve out of. He could remember the way their apartment stunk if someone below was frying something, or the heat in the summer that had them both stripped down to undershirts and shorts and panting like dogs.

In a way, he was secretly, selfishly glad that his most vivid and numerous memories all involved Steve. He knew, logically, that James Buchanan Barnes must have existed outside of Steve’s orbit. But Bucky still thought that the most important parts of his life were the days when he loved Steve.

They tried to find a picture to watch after dinner; Stark had suggested that they watch the newest animated picture from Walt Disney Productions, but it turned out it was a movie called Frozen, which made them both agree that Stark was probably trying to kid them. They gave up on pictures and read instead, because reading new things was easy; pictures and music had changed so much, but books were just the same, just text on paper, and the stories and writers and words were new so it stimulated their thoughts and kept them rooted in the present. Still, leaning on opposite arms of the couch, their legs tangled together, was just enough like the past to be comforting, like short ribs with horseradish.

Bucky was so absorbed in his book that he didn't realize how quickly time was passing. After the first shuttles left Earth, he finally looked up, only to realize he was trembling—with exhaustion, with emotion, with the shivers running down Steve's legs as his eyes darted across the page, devouring the book he was reading. Bucky set down his book on the coffee table and leaned back, watching Steve's focus, the sharpness of his gaze, and he could just watch Steve for hours and hours.

Without looking up, Steve said, “Hold on, I'm almost done.”

“You better be,” Bucky said, yawning. “It's almost two.”

“Ten minutes,” Steve muttered, but he said that as he turned a page backwards to reread a passage, and Bucky rolled his eyes and settled in to wait.

Twenty minutes later, Steve set his book down, leaning back over the arm of the couch to stretch his back. “They wrote some good books while we were asleep.”

Bucky's lip twitched as he watched Steve's shirt ride up, revealing the hard, flat planes of his abdomen. “Sure did,” he agreed. After dinner, he had some vague plan of reading for a bit then taking Steve to bed for a quickie—nothing too intense, maybe handjobs or a suckjob—but that had quickly fallen to the wayside. He got up off the couch and offered Steve his hand to pull him up.

Steve accepted it, yawning as he followed Bucky to their bedroom. Curling up next to each other, his head resting on Steve's massive rack, arm draped over his wasp waist, Bucky trailed a hand up Steve's shirt and said, “Wanna have sex?”

Steve chuckled warmly. “Seems like you do.”

If they did, it would be lazy and warm and good, but Bucky was feeling too lazy and warm and good to move. He frowned. “Not what I asked.” Then, he added, out of force of habit, “Dumbass.”

Steve's laugh rumbled through his chest. “I’m always up for it if you are.”

Bucky pinched his side in retaliation. “If you ain’t gonna give me a straight answer,” he said seriously, “Then I’m gonna hafta assume you’ve just been lying back and thinking of England this whole time.”

“Buck—” Steve struggled to sit up, tugging at Bucky’s arms, his shoulders, until Bucky looked up at him. “That’s not—that’s not true,” and he was downright pouting.

“I know it’s not,” Bucky said, mostly honestly; of course he knew that Steve liked sex, once upon a time, back in Brooklyn, even though back then they couldn’t do it all the ways they wanted most of the time, or when they wanted, and they had to be real careful about how they did it.

In the war their sexing took on an edge of desperation, because being in with the Howlies all the time meant that their opportunities to shack up were few and far between, but with Steve healthier—and a steady supply of free condoms—it was awesome to hold Steve in his arms again, to explore his strange new body and f*ck out all his complicated feelings about the thing they turned his Steve into. But they started not-talking about things then. Bucky couldn’t tell him about Azzano, Steve was evasive about Project Rebirth. The future and the past both felt so far away but it was the only thing he could think of at night, staring up at the ceiling of his tent, to distract himself from the blood in his eyes. He wondered sometimes if Steve thought of it as the only way for them to get close, the only way for them to be together, something they had to do every time they got a chance because who f*cking knew when the next chance came. If it stopped being a pleasure and started being a chore.

And then—HYDRA. And they couldn’t talk. And the only way they could really be together, be a couple, was when they were having sex. And every time they had sex there was a chance Bucky would knock Steve up. And it really did stop being about having Steve and it became something that the Asset was ordered to do. And now he wondered if that poison HYDRA slipped into something that was surely good at one point still lingered in their every encounter.

“Would you even tell me if you didn’t wanna f*ck?” Bucky asked, and it was too damn late—early—for this conversation, because he sounded miserable, when it wasn’t even really that big of a deal. HYDRA took a lot of things. Emotionally-uncomplicated sex ought to be the least of his worries.

“Jesus, Buck.” Steve really did push him off at that, sitting upright, pulling Bucky to sit up too. He crossed his legs tailor-style, putting his hands on his lap, his pretty eyes dark and earnest in the dim light of their room. “You know me. You think I’d let you get away with doing anything without kicking up dust about it? Did you forget who I am?”

“Yeah, all the time,” Bucky joked weakly, but that wasn’t even half-true. He ran a hand through his hair, breathing out slowly. “It’s—f*ck. I don’t know. It’s late and it’s dumb and—I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“No, let’s settle this hash,” Steve said firmly, eyes flashing. Bucky shoulda never brought it up. Steve was gonna see this conversation through. “You think—what, I don’t want you no more? Is that the problem?”

“God, I sound like a dumbf*ck when you put it like that.” Bucky groaned.

“That’s ‘cause you are one,” Steve fired off. “And I’m the idiot who fell in love with you.” He leaned over the bed, bringing up one large hand, cupping Bucky’s jaw. He had callouses again, from the gauntlets, from pencils, not soft and smooth like—like an omega, Bucky thought, and it made him smile. “I’m also the idiot who wants to jump you ‘round the clock. You’re a handsome man, Barnes.”

Bucky couldn’t help but preen at the compliment, delivered in a tone low and raw with honesty. “You’re none too shabby yourself, Rogers,” he said softly. “God. f*ck. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I don’t even know where that—where that sh*t came from.”

“The depression, the war, HYDRA. Pick your poison,” Steve said with a shrug, and f*ck, wasn’t that all it came down to? But Steve drew back, dropping his eyes a little, and his hand fell, too, to twist around the other. “Maybe—maybe you don’t really remember. But we…you tended to be the pursuer.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow; he had a few distinct memories of coming home feeling tired after a long day of work and having Steve pounce on him the second he closed the door behind him. Steve chuckled, because of course he could read his mind. “Not all the time. I’m a man with needs, too. But you’d flirt, and I’d snipe at you, and you’d flirt some more, but it was all—it was just games, just me bein’ me and you bein’ you. And I sorta liked playing coy. I never admitted it, but—”

“But I knew,” Bucky said. He grinned. “And it only took me seventy years to get a proper confession out of you, huh?”

“God, you’re such a jerk,” and Steve was rolling his eyes.

“I’m your jerk.” He got a brilliant grin at that; he flashed one himself, but it quickly faded. “You make me a promise, okay? You promise me that you tell me if you’re ever not in the mood. Because—” He held up a hand to stall the protest he could see brewing on Steve’s lips. “I absolutely know you do things because you think they’ll make me happy. But I don’t ever wanna be happy ‘cause of something that makes you unhappy. Especially something that takes mutual trust.”

Steve pursed his lips. “All right,” he said eventually. “I promise. But you gotta do the same for me. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to. Not anymore.”

He kissed him, long and slow, their lips sliding against each other, just because he could. “Promise,” he whispered against his lips before pulling back to meet Steve’s eyes. “Wanna have sex?”

Steve smiled at him, a weird mix of teasing and sheepish. “I can honestly say that that I would very much like it if we did. But,” and he paused for emphasis, “I am pretty tired.”

“I’ll take a rain check, then. One I am absolutely going to cash.” Bucky ran a hand down Steve’s massive chest, grinning at the flush that rose in his cheeks, at the headiness that appeared in his eyes. He pushed at him, and Steve went down willingly—for once—and soon he was lying on Steve again, sleep tugging at him. He reached down and pulled the blanket around them, and the last thing he felt before he drifted off to sleep was good.

–

No.

No no no no no

Stop stop stop stop please stop please please please

“Remain where you are, Soldier. Do not move.”

No no no no no please no please

“Do you understand?

“This is the consequence of your actions.

“Learn well, Soldier.

“You are the Fist of HYDRA.

“He remains with you because we allow it.

“If you misbehave, then we will take away your pet.

“And your pet will hurt.

“You do not want him to be hurt, Soldier.”

No no no please don’t please don’t want please please please don’t hurt

Don’t hurt—

Don’t hurt—

Manacles. Mouthguard. Headpiece.

Blue eyes, gazing stoically ahead. Blue like fire.

“Commence the wipe.”

The Asset screamed.

–

“Bucky. Sweetheart, honey. Bucky. It’s okay, dearest. You’re safe. You’re with me, Buck.”

His throat ached.

He took a gasping breath for air, feeling it rasp down his throat. A vision swam before his eyes, and when he blinked, it cleared, resolving into Steve’s face, looking down at him.

“You’re James Buchanan Barnes. I’m—”

“Steve.” It came out as a pained whisper.

“Yeah. That’s right, sweetheart. I’m your Steve. Can you sit up?”

Bucky closed his eyes. He couldn’t. The Handler—

There were no more handlers. There were no more punishments.

But he swallowed the fire in his throat and shook his head.

“That’s okay.” Warm arms wrapped around him and gently pulled him upright. Halfway there, it was like his muscles remembered that they were allowed to move, and he was able to push himself up, scrub a hand across his face, run a hand through his hair.

He immediately turned and hugged Steve, burying his face into his shoulder. Steve wrapped his arms around him, steady as a rock, except—except—

Vacant blue eyes.

He pulled back quickly, gazing at Steve. His eyes weren’t empty and unknowing. They were bright with worry, darting around his face, taking in his eyes, the sweat on his brow, the set of his lips, gathering information and synthesizing it and knowing.

“f*ck,” Bucky whispered.

“Can you get up? I want to get you hot water,” Steve whispered.

Bucky nodded, because his throat ached and he desperately needed something to drink. Past experiences with his nightmares showed them the best way to do this, and even though every limb was trembling it was terribly familiar to shuffle out of bed, to lean on Steve, let him guide them out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

He let Steve sit him on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. He watched as Steve boiled some water, accepted the mug when Steve passed it to him. He took a few sips of the hot water, watching Steve’s eyes, watching him drum his fingers on the counter, watching the tense lines of his shoulders.

He was afraid to ask. If he asked, then the answer might be yes.

But not knowing if that dream was real or not would be worse.

“Did they ever put you in the Chair?”

Steve’s eyes flickering away from him told him all he needed to know.

He pushed the mug away from him so he wouldn’t accidentally knock it to the floor with how hard his fingers were trembling. “No.” Steve took a deep breath, and Bucky found his head shaking minutely. “No. No.”

“It’s all right, Buck,” Steve said gently.

“No. Don’t—f*cking tell me it’s all right. They put you in the Chair.” Even thinking about the chair made him flinch in anticipation of searing, burning pain. It wasn’t burning pain like

electric rods girls red Steve Steve remember don’t flesh burnt lightning

but one that burned inside, in the brain, tore the mind apart, burned away all thought but please make it stop i’ll do anything just make it stop.

He choked at the thought of Steve experiencing that pain. At the thought of turning around and seeing Steve, his eyes empty, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with blood. It was—the worst thing in the world that could happen. His Steve, his brilliant Steve, their past, their relationship—burned out of him with lightning and fire.

A thought occurred to him.

He reeled back so far that he almost fell off of the barstool, staring at Steve in pure horror.

“What did I do?”

Steve’s eyes flashed, and that was anger there, anger and righteousness, not cold, dead oblivion, and Bucky loved him, loved him with all of his soul, and he hated himself with equal measure for causing HYDRA to put Steve in the chair to snuff out that flaming righteousness for even a second.

“We,” Steve said through gritted teeth, “escaped.”

Bucky couldn’t speak for a long moment. His throat worked, his lips moved soundlessly, but he couldn’t remember how to form words. Couldn’t remember how to breathe.

At last, he whispered,

“We escaped?”

“Yeah.” Steve’s lips curved upwards, turning his clenched teeth into a feral smile. “We got away. You came to me and freed me, and you even got the shield. We escaped.”

Bucky closed his eyes, almost dizzy with the revelation. He tried to imagine that first taste of freedom, going outside after so long, but all he could see was a gas station, a car, five little trackers lying in bloody pools on a tissue.

“When…and how long?” Bucky opened his eyes again.

Steve pursed his lips. “Sometime in the seventies, I think? An unstable time period. They needed you and they let their guard down. You were on a long mission. Over ten days. When you came back, you seemed normal, but I guess you were biding your time.” There was that feral smile, that spark of anger in his eyes; proof that while Bucky may have succumbed to HYDRA, let them twist him into this thing he’d become, Steve was stronger than him. Strong enough to go into the Chair and survive without help, without needing someone to remember things for him. “We fought our way out. You found the shield somewhere, and we escaped with it.”

—Been what? A goddamn— Guilt sparked in Bucky’s chest. It wasn’t even objectively true in the first place, and he should have made it clear he knew that. But he should have also made it clear that he knew Steve, and he knew Steve wouldn’t’ve gone so long without a fight, even with Bucky holding him hostage by his mere existence.

“It was a good opportunity. One of the best we had,” Steve said gently. “But we weren’t in a good place. It was unfamiliar enemy territory. I think the government of the country was working for HYDRA. The police were helping HYDRA look out for us. We got caught in forty-eight hours. We jumped into the ocean to try and get away, but they picked us up. The shield sank, though.” He shrugged. “Someone must have found it and picked it up. Or maybe Howard found it while he was looking for me.”

Bitterness rose in Bucky. They should have found Steve sooner. HYDRA did, after all. It was cruel and unfair of him to think that, especially when he was the one to execute Howard and his wife. But he couldn’t help but feel a fission of anger at everyone who was involved in Steve falling into HYDRA’s arms.

“Forty-eight hours,” Bucky said softly.

“We did the best we could,” Steve said. “We were just unlucky.”

“And you were punished for it.” Bucky’s eyes were wet.

“And I’d do it all again,” Steve said firmly. “Buck—” He shook his head slowly. “Being able to see the sky. Breathe in fresh air. That alone would’ve been worth it.” Leaning forward, he took Bucky’s hand in his own. “But each time you made a choice that told me that you were still in there, still fighting against HYDRA’s torture and lies, still able to recover your instincts to do good—I would have gladly taken whatever HYDRA threw at me if it meant that I could see those glimpses of you they tried so damn hard to kill.”

“God, Steve,” Bucky choked out. “I wouldn’t’ve survived seeing you get punished like that.” He wasn’t strong the way Steve was. He couldn’t take licks and get back up for more. He liked for painful things to end, and quickly—stopping bullies beating Steve with a single punch wasn’t to prove anything, it was just to stop the pain of seeing someone hurt Steve. Steve absolutely would have endured torture, driven only by his principles and sheer stubbornness, but Bucky could never.

Steve looked at him sadly. “I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I didn’t try to escape more often.” He squeezed Bucky’s hand. “I couldn’t be careless when it came to you.”

“I know,” Bucky echoed him, just as soft, and squeezed his hand back.

The Valkryie was proof of Steve Rogers’ greatest weakness.

The only thing that could make Steven Grant Rogers, dumb kid from Brooklyn, give up a fight was James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky sighed softly, and Steve offered him a tiny smile. “You took good care of me, after the Chair,” he said.

“I better have,” Bucky mumbled. “It was my damn fault.”

“For trying to escape from HYDRA? Ain’t no one’s damn fault but theirs.” Steve scowled, but the smile returned, slowly, like the sun peeking through clouds on a rainy day. “You did, Buck, you really did. You touched me gently and you showered me and petted me and—” He paused, long enough for the rain to clear, leaving nothing but a beautiful smile. “I didn’t know you, but I knew I loved you.”

“Yeah.” Bucky smiled back. “I know the feeling.”

–

They tried to sleep after Bucky’s nightmare, but it was an objective failure in both senses of the term. They eventually abandoned their tossing and turning on the bed to migrate to the couch. Steve dozed off in his arms at around four in the morning, but his brow began to furrow, and he began to shuffle around in telltale signs of a nightmare of his own. Steve’s nightmares were rarely flailing, screaming nightmares, though Sam suggested it was from years of Steve’s reluctance to show weakness in front of HYDRA observation that made even his unconscious reactions muted.

Steve’s near-silent nightmares meant that sometimes Bucky, even as light of a sleeper he was, sometimes missed them. And wasn’t that a blow to his desire to protect Steve, that he could simply miss the times when Steve needed him. That Steve could need him to wake him up, to hold him, to warm him water, and he would not be there.

It was a good thing that he was awake now. He couldn’t miss the nightmare.

“Steve. Sweetheart, wake up,” Bucky sat up and scooted away from Steve, not crowding him, even though it went against every fiber of his being to pull away. When Steve was having a nightmare, touching him to wake him up would only result in Bucky sprawled out on the floor and Steve crouched in the corner. They learned that the hard way.

Steve started awake almost the second the last of Bucky’s skin left him, and Bucky all but threw himself at him again, wrapping him up in a hug. Steve hugged him back immediately, burying his nose into the crook of his skin, inhaling, and Bucky wondered if the acrid tinge he could smell was actual fear or just nightmare sweats.

“I fell asleep?” Steve was slurring slightly, and Bucky hated sleep for being Steve’s enemy.

“Yeah. You wanna tell me about it?” But Bucky knew the answer; Steve was already shaking his head. Steve didn’t need Bucky’s swiss-cheese brain to tell the difference between dreams and reality, memory and hallucination.

“Nah. Put on the radio? The…” He waved a hand in the air vaguely; he was off-kilter enough that his picture-perfect memory was struggling to come up with the word, but Bucky knew what he was talking about.

“A funny one? Cooking? One of your boring ones?” Bucky had left his phone in the bedroom, and he wasn’t about to leave Steve to go grab it or let Steve out of his sight. His tablet was on the coffee table, though, and he leaned forward just enough to grab it, hanging onto Steve's arm like he was hanging off of a ship's rigging.

“Somethin’ funny,” Steve said, yawning widely enough to crack his jaw, and Bucky selected one of the podcasts they liked. It was like radio, only you could listen to it whenever you wanted and you could skip the ad breaks.

He wasn’t in much mood to laugh, not after that f*cking nightmare—no, his was a memory, it was true, and that made it worse, because it wasn’t just a nightmare his whole f*cking life was a living nightmare—but light and laughter slowly crept into their apartment, sneaking in drips and drops, borrowed from the sun and some strangers.

–

Bucky dreaded going to sleep that night. As the hour drew later, he grew tenser and tenser. Exhaustion was tugging at him, but he blinked it away. He was the Winter Soldier. He could go days without sleep.

Steve gave him a hard look. He put down his pencil and held out his hand. Bucky took it, and he tugged him to the bedroom. He sat down first, leaning up against the headboard. Bucky waited for him to arrange the pillows to his liking before he lay down, his head in his lap, curling up against one thick thigh like a child.

“Go to sleep,” Steve whispered. “I’ll keep watch.”

And so Bucky—

Slept.

–

The Asset was—

Afraid.

This was—

Acceptable.

It was correct for the Asset to fear the Chair. To fear the Handler. To fear punishment. So the Asset could be controlled, could be obedient. Could behave.

The Asset stared at the vacant blond man sitting on the cot. It felt afraid.

It made to move. It shied away before taking a step. The blond man stared passively ahead, unseeing, unthinking, unfeeling.

This was—

Wrong. Unacceptable. Must be accepted. The Asset had failed. This was its punishment.

The Asset deserved to be punished. But the man—

The man deserved none of this.

The Asset took a cautious step closer. The man stank of sweat. This was wrong. The lips turned downward. It tried to asses the issue. It tried to think of solutions.

Cold, cold, but gentle hands, soft voice, damp skin

In order to fix the problem, the Asset must get closer. The Asset feared nothing. Except for the Chair. Except for the Handler. Except for the punishment when it failed.

The Asset stepped forward. It reached for the man’s hand. It stopped.

The Asset hurt this man. The Asset was not worthy of touching this man.

But this man was hurt. And no one was here to fix what the Asset caused. The Asset must address the harm it caused.

It must not hurt the man any longer.

The Asset took the man’s hand in the flesh hand.

The man looked up. His eyes were empty and lost. They focused on the Asset.

The Asset had no words. The Asset did not know how to soothe. But it found a low, soft coo in its throat. It made gentle rumbling noises as it tugged on the man’s hand. It coaxed the man to his feet.

The man was willing and docile. This pleased the Asset. This disturbed the Asset.

The man followed the Asset to the shower. He allowed the Asset to remove his shorts without resistance. The Asset picked up the hose and paused.

It pointed the hose at the floor and turned on the water. It then put its metal hand in front of the spray. With the water sluicing down and a bar of soap, the man’s skin became clean.

This pleased the Asset.

It turned off the water and replaced the shorts with new shorts found folded up at the base of the bed. It herded the man back to the cot. The man lay down willingly, and the Asset lay down on top of him. It made gentle cooing noises.

It wondered if the man had, perhaps, forgotten permanently.

This greatly disturbed the Asset.

Its coos became softer, wetter. Until they were soft noises of distress.

A hand moved up and rested on the back of his head.

“Shhh,” the man whispered. “I’m here.”

–

Bucky woke up four hours later. He let out a wet, ragged gasp that made Steve’s hand, stroking his forehead, pause.

“All right?” he whispered.

“Memory,” Bucky whispered back, loud in the darkness. “But—it’s okay.”

He took care of Steve.

That pleased the Bucky.

He took another deep breath, and then sat up to watch over Steve while he took his turn to sleep.

–

He dreamed of huddling next to a cliff face, cold wind in his lungs.

–

He dreamed of eating snow, tasting the flakes melting away on his tongue.

–

He dreamed of walking. The world is very cold but his right hand is very warm.

–

He dreamed of an apartment. The wallpaper is moldy. There are wires and mouse droppings along the walls. There are co*ckroaches.

He cannot keep Steve safe.

–

“Remain where you are, Soldier. That is an order. Keep your eyes open and do not look away.

“You were warned before about what happens if you try to escape. I suppose your previous handlers were too lenient on you, if the punishment didn’t stick.

“We will not be so lenient. This is only the beginning, Soldier. If you attempt to escape again, you will watch every alpha in the base take a turn with HYDRA’s breeding bitch. Understand?

“Answer the question, Soldier.”

Understood.

“Good. Now watch your punishment closely. Never forget that everything you are belongs to HYDRA.”

The Asset could not look away.

The Asset could not look away.

They

They

They

…

–

He woke up.

Steve was still asleep. He was still asleep because he didn’t scream. He didn’t even twitch.

He was lying on a patch of dampness. He could feel the coolness of water on his cheeks, his upper lip, his temple. He tried to will himself to sit up. Couldn’t. Whether that was from the lingering deeply-ingrained urge to obey or because every limb in his body was numb, he couldn’t tell.

He lay there, frozen and shuddering, staring into the darkness, as images ghosted over his mind’s eye, each one making his heart seize like he was being electrocuted. He wondered if he was having a heart attack.

Time slipped by, measured in the feeling slowly creeping back through his fingers and toes, the slowing of the pulsing in his brain, the evening of his rapid breath. He sat up as soon as he could, running his fingers through his hair and tugging once to center himself.

Then, he reached out and touched Steve’s hand. “Steve.” He didn’t know how, but his voice was even and steady. Even loud, in the quiet night.

Steve woke up instantly, blinking his gorgeous blue eyes open. He looked at him, and shuddered, remembering how Steve had turned his face away, unable to look at him as—

As—

“Steve,” he choked out again, and Steve sat up, immediately wrapping his arms around him.

“Nightmare?” Steve asked, and his voice was full of quiet despair, I thought it was getting better.

He shook his head. This wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t disjointed and hazy and illogical. It made—perfect f*cking sense.

“How many times did we try to escape.”

Steve stopped breathing.

His breath was quickening again. His head was throbbing. He couldn’t feel his fingers and toes. Anger and despair and guilt stirred together in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to punch someone. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to scream and vomit and cry and curl up and hide and wither away and everything at once but he couldn’t move.

“f*ck. Steve.” His eyes were blurring.

“What did you remember?” Steve asked, and his voice was flat, quiet and dead, and he hated it.

He let out a broken laugh, leaning away from Steve and dashing a hand across his eyes. “They. f*ck, Steve. They—they—” And he couldn’t say it, he was too much of a coward, because if he said it out loud he would rip off his own ears so he could unhear it. “They hurt you.”

“They hurt you worse.” He couldn’t see Steve through the wash of tears in his eyes, but he didn’t need to see to know what he looked like, a little punk kid sticking his chin out with blood running from his nose, jaw set and eyes alight, and f*ck, he spent his whole life trying to protect him from everything and everyone and his own damn self and he couldn’t—he couldn’t—he failed the most important mission in his life, and Steve was sitting here, no doubt with his chin jutted out in the exact same bullheaded way, too damn stubborn to acknowledge that he was hurt.

“You goddamn punk—” He drew a breath, and brought up one trembling hand to his face, wiping away the wetness covering his eyes. “You—why didn’t you f*cking tell me?”

“It hasn’t really come up.” Steve was—he was looking away—he was looking away—he was looking away—

“It didn’t really—” He downright growled, like a goddamn animal, and maybe that’s the reason why he couldn’t feel his limbs, because HYDRA took him and turned him into a beast. He used to know how to be a goddamn human, he remembered that much, he used to know how to talk and smile and joke without feeling like the words were coming from a record player that he swallowed that was playing without any input from his scrambled brain. “It didn’t really come up? f*cking hell, Steve, I’ve been dreaming about escaping for the last week and it hasn’t really come up?”

“You were thinking about the first escape,” Steve said, like the obstinate bastard he was. “You didn’t—”

“I didn’t remember the second one, huh?” he chuckled, because if he was already crying. “Were you ever going to tell me, if I didn’t remember?”

Steve finally looked right at him. God—he still looked—and he knew that he thought he was doing the right thing. “I figured it’d come up sometime.”

“Yeah, that f*cking sometime was the first time we had sex after we escaped. Jesus Christ, this isn’t about me not remembering what we ate for dinner on your twenty-first birthday or what the hell ever—” but as he said that, he suddenly, desperately wanted to know what they ate for dinner on Steve’s twenty-first birthday, and tears sprang to his eyes again, hot and angry, “—this is about you getting f*cking violated and you didn’t tell me so I couldn’t even do anything to make sure I didn’t hurt you more!”

“You can’t hurt me, Buck—”

“BUT I DID!” he shouted. Steve tried to interrupt him, but he raised his voice, barreling over Steve, “I know I’m not all here, and f*ck, I know I’m not the man you loved, but I wanna—I wanna, f*ck, I wanna know everything about you, the bad sh*t and the good sh*t, because—because, or else, what’s the f*cking point of us being together?”

The room was silent.

He and Steve glared at each other.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve hissed. “I have never once thought of you as a different man from who you were in the past. You’re still—you’ll always been my Bucky, no matter what.”

He laughed. He could do nothing else in the face of Steve’s misplaced devotion, his misguided loyalty. “Well, maybe you’re f*cking wrong,” he said, and the room was too warm, Steve’s eyes were too blue, and the memories and the nightmares and the past and the future were colliding and he just needed a moment to think—

Bucky walked out the door.

–

He went down to the darkened gym and sat down. He was already trembling. His hands were clenched into fists. He was crying, again, and he leaned with his back against the wall and bowed his head, letting hair fall around his face.

The crying stopped at T+10. The fear began at T+2.5.

He lasted until T+22.

–

When he opened the door to the apartment, the light was on in the living room. Steve was curled up on the couch. His head snapped up to look at Bucky.

Bucky felt suddenly. intensely awkward. He cleared his throat. “I’m still angry,” he said. “But…I can’t…” He sighed. “I can’t be away from you right now.”

“Yeah,” Steve said softly. He held out one arm.

Bucky sat down next to him and leaned against him. He could feel from the pressure that Steve was leaning against him, too.

“I love you,” Steve said.

Bucky blinked, but decided after a moment that he wasn’t going to cry again. “I love you too,” he said. “I wouldn’t be so mad at you if—if I didn’t love you.” He found himself choking on the last few words for a reason he couldn’t place, like someone had grabbed at strings tied around his heart and yanked.

He felt Steve dropping his head onto his shoulder. “Your ma used to say that.”

I wouldn’t be so mad if I didn’t love you, a woman with dark hair said, looking down at him. Bucky closed his eyes, and instead of white walls and bruises he saw warm wood and bloody knuckles.

“She said it to me a—a year or two after we paired up,” Steve said, and he was getting choked-up too. “And that’s when I knew she accepted me as a part of the family.”

His ma’s eyes (blue, they were blue), glaring daggers at the small blond figure by his side, and he was bowled over by her love.

“Thanks for remembering,” he whispered. Steve said nothing, but his arm tightened around him.

–

Captain America took one step into the Quinjet before he stopped. “Woah,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

He looked around, his eyes darting between everyone: Bruce, twisting his fingers together, Iron Man, tapping on the screen in front of him, Hawkeye and Black Widow all but sitting on each other’s chairs, before they landed on the one-foot distance in between Steve and Bucky. They were sitting next to each other, of course, and both of their faces were the determined, impassive masks they kept on in public, but the tension between them was palpable.

“See? Cap picked up on it immediately. The vibes are way off. We just want Mommy and Daddy to stop fighting,” Iron Man said.

“We’re not fighting,” Steve said, but a muscle in his jaw jumped as he spoke, and Bucky rolled his eyes. Steve’s poker face was so godawful there was no sense in even trying to lie.

“Uh-huh.” Captain America slid into his chair, strapping himself into place. “Is it something you want to talk about?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Steve said, which would’ve been more convincing if he didn’t say it through gritted teeth. Bucky just grunted.

“Are Mommy—”

“Don’t f*cking call him that!” Bucky barked, slamming his metal fist down on the armrest, which proceeded to crack under the force. Bruce jumped six feet in the air, and Bucky felt briefly bad for startling him, but then Steve growled,

“Don’t be an ass, Buck.”

“Hey, shut the f*ck up,” Bucky snapped, and he saw Steve’s eyes flash and his shoulders pull back, gearing up for a fight—

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Cool it, you two,” Captain America said, holding up both hands. “Is this going to be a problem on the mission? We can and will bench you if there’s some sh*t you need to figure out. We haven’t taken off yet.”

Bucky glared at his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Steve doing that f*cking chin thing. “There’s no problems, Captain.”

“I can see a lot of problems from where I’m sitting, Nomad, four of which are Avengers,” Captain America said dryly. “We can deal with the problems when we get home, but that requires us to get home from the mission alive. Which we’ll have the highest chance of it we all just keep a lid on it until the mission’s over.”

Bucky was hoping, a little meanly, that Steve was gonna push back against Captain America, so that Captain America would have a reason to bench Steve and keep him away from HYDRA for a little while longer. But Steve’s desire to punch bullies outweighed his natural bullheadedness for now, because he said, “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“There’s plenty to worry about, so how ‘bout modify that to ‘nothing to worry about that’ll get Nomad and Soldier left behind in the Quinjet’, okay?”

Steve gave him a curt nod, and Bucky looked up just long enough to glare at him before dropping his gaze back down to the ground.

“Wait, you said four of your problems are Avengers. Who’s the non-problem?” Iron Man asked from the co*ckpit.

“Bruce,” Captain America said.

Bruce looked surprised. “You’re too kind, Cap,” he muttered. “I daresay I’m the biggest problem here—both physically and metaphorically.”

Hawkeye immediately scoffed. “I get that you feel that way ‘cause you’re used to being the weirdest guy in the room,” he said, “But I promise, you’re the cream of the f*cked-up crop amongst the rest of us.”

That got Bruce to smile a little, and Bucky couldn’t help but warm at Hawkeye’s gruff kindness towards Bruce as he settled back in his seat, closing his eyes.

He was desperate for a mission. The last two days had been tense, with the two of them warily circling each other like a pair of bulls, not wanting to leave each other’s side but unable to be close when this mood hung between them like a noose. He thought that maybe they were on the verge of some sort of resolution, either a wordless white flag or maybe going down to the gym and punching their feelings out, but then they got an urgent call from Agent Hill that a fully-functioning HYDRA base had been found, and that had set off another fight because Bucky was too damn scared of Steve getting anywhere near HYDRA again and Steve was too damn stubborn to agree to sit even one mission out for Bucky’s peace of mind.

His mood was souring again, just thinking about their fight, but punching a few Nazis would hopefully make him feel better.

“This isn’t a base you recognize, Soldier? Nomad?” Captain America asked.

“Not that I remember, but we all know how reliable that is,” Bucky muttered.

“Come on, pal,” Steve ground out, and Bucky snapped back,

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, okay? Quit it!”

Steve opened his mouth, but before he could say something that would no doubt get him benched for the next ten years Iron Man interrupted, and holy hell Bucky was suddenly, incandescently furious at him for butting in with his big mouth.

“So are you two getting a divorce?”

“Shut the f*ck up!”

“Shut the hell up!”

“Oh my god can we please just focus on the mission,” Captain America begged.

One hour of awkward silence passed, punctuated only occasionally with attempts by the others to puncture the silence. Iron Man navigated the Quinjet down onto some lonely Canadian island, and they—with the exception of Bruce—departed the Quinjet. The silence turned purposeful as the Avengers approached the base.

Fighting with the team felt something akin to comfortable by now. This was the most occupied base they’d encountered so far, but the tactics were essentially the same. Black Widow infiltrated first, searching for the command center to start pulling sensitive information out, while Winter Soldier and Hawkeye set themselves up in sniper’s nests. Captain America, Iron Man, and Nomad started the ground assault, and once the enemies on the exterior were mopped up Winter Soldier and Hawkeye joined them to enter the compound. From there, it was smashing skulls and grabbing files while Iron Man joined Black Widow to deal with any techy stuff. Bruce stayed in the Quinjet to work comms and keep watch for any reinforcements approaching, with Hulk on standby in case they really needed to smash some sh*t.

This was what he was good at: watching Nomad’s back. Putting bullets in eyes that looked at him, snapping hands that touched him.

This assault, though, he could feel himself backsliding into a deep viciousness. He stabbed a man in the gut and then punched into the wound with enough force that he could grasp his entrails and drag them out of his body as his victim screamed in terror. Instead of headshots and sliced throats, he aimed for the gut, for the limbs, stepping on the twitching, breathing bodies that fell at his feet.

This did not feel familiar to him. Instead, he thought that this was Bucky Barnes’ protectiveness, Sergeant Barnes’ pragmatism, and the Winter Soldier’s ruthlessness rolled up into something new. Something that was cruel and violent and vengeful.

“Soldier!” Nomad barked at him, after he pinned a man to the wall with a long knife and walked away. There was a crack behind him as Nomad snapped his victim's neck and a thud as he pulled the knife out, letting the body fall to the ground. “Soldier, you need to stop.”

Nomad had been cleaning up his messes. Putting men out of their misery. Delivering death to those that begged for it. Winter Soldier wished he wouldn’t.

“They’re HYDRA. They deserve to suffer,” Winter Soldier said.

“You never tried before now,” Nomad said.

“You know why I’m doing this. Don’t act like you don’t!” Winter Soldier snapped.

“I do, and I think it’s f*cking stupid,” Nomad said flatly. “None of these people are responsible! They’re Nazis, yeah, but you’re punishing them for a crime they didn’t commit.”

“They would have. Every single one of these bastards, if they had a chance, they would have done it too,” Winter Soldier growled. whor* of HYDRA—he shook his head like a dog to shake the voice out of his head.

“Soldier, Nomad. You two are on comms right now,” Captain America said.

“This is no place for a lovers’ spat,” Iron Man added.

“This place is almost empty, anyways,” Winter Soldier grumbled, turning away. The hallway they were in was littered with dead bodies, and there were no footsteps running anymore. The battle was over, much to his disgust. He didn’t want to be done yet.

“Yeah, because the f*cking HYDRA agents were running towards us, sh*tting their pants in fear, begging to get arrested instead of subjected to whatever-the-f*ck you were doing down there,” Hawkeye said.

Winter Soldier blinked once, while Nomad sent him a far-too-familiar look that was dripping with I told you so. Winter Soldier let out a low, warning growl, but Nomad just rolled his eyes.

“We can hear you two silently arguing, you know,” Black Widow said coolly.

Winter Soldier huffed and turned away. Nomad picked his way among the bodies, accompanied by the occasional crack of snapped necks. Tomorrow, the guilt will set in, Winter Soldier knew. But today, all he felt was vicious satisfaction, especially when he looked down at a blonde head, stained red and crusting to the floor. He lifted his boot and ground down on the skull, feeling it crunch beneath his feet.

He and Nomad headed back to the rendezvous point. They kept up a pointed silence even as Iron Man’s chatter filled their ears. “This is huge. They have a ton of sh*t on these computers. I think this is an information storage facility specifically. It’s all lock, stocked, and barreled: encrypted, password-protected, written in code. It seems to be all in Russian or German—or maybe translated from German to Russian or vice versa—but I got J on it, he’ll give us something soon.”

“Going by patterns in the file names and layouts,” Black Widow said, “These all seem to be related to one or maybe two or three projects.”

“We’ve definitely got something juicy here, if they’re going through such lengths to protect it.” Iron Man said. “These files were buried so deep that I doubt more than one or two people in this base knew they had these puppies on their hands. Oh, hang on—J’s got something for me.”

There was a merciful pause. Winter Soldier and Nomad arrived at the entrance. Hawkeye was already out, stationed up in one of the guard towers, keeping watch for any approaching enemies. Captain America was off to the left, and he had about ten HYDRA guards kneeling in front of him, unarmed, wrists and ankles cuffed. Winter Soldier stared at them. His finger twitched on the trigger of his gun, aching to raise it and mow them down. Nomad was already angry enough at him. A few more war crimes would barely budge the needle. But the adrenaline was already starting to drain, and it was taking the anger with it, and the soldiers were staring at him, naked fear in their eyes, and that was satisfying enough for him. He made sure to glare at them, shifting his gun in his hands as if he was about to bring it to bear. One of the soldiers began to openly sob.

He looked away, shifting back to face Nomad, who was frowning at him, eyebrows drawn downwards in naked disapproval. He wanted to pick a fight, but Iron Man was talking again.

“Body of the work is taking time, but like Black Widow said, they all seem to be related to one big project. Nomad, Soldier—does Project SPARTA mean anything to you?”

Because he was looking at Steve, he could see the shock, realization, and horror take over his expression in turns, one after another but not quite waiting their turns, like waves hitting a beach, tumbling over each other into one mess. He wondered if his own face was reflecting his own tumultuous sea that he could feel roiling inside of his chest.

“I—” Steve started to speak, had to pause, swallowed. “That’s—that’s us. We’re I-1 and I-2 of Project SPARTA.”

–

The flight back was silent.

Bucky stared down at his knees, keeping his face lowered enough so that he wouldn’t even see the other people in the plane out of the corner of his eye.

His boots had blood on them.

It was on his pants, up the hems and as high as the calves. It was on the arm, too, blood and bits of viscera trapped underneath the plates, all the perfumes of Arabia—

He wondered if Steve would help him wash the blood away.

Heat prickled at the corner of his eyes, but he blinked them away.

Suddenly, Steve’s foot shifted. It scooted closer, until the side of his shoe was pressed against Bucky’s. Bucky wondered what about his bearing said that he needed something right now. Then he wondered if there was any part of him that wasn’t screaming that he needed something right now.

Then he wondered if Steve might need something, too.

He shifted the heel of his shoe until their feet were entirely pressed together, toe to heel, and Steve’s thigh unclenched. Bucky thought about reaching out for him, touching his thigh, holding his hand—

But he remained still for the rest of the journey.

–

When the Quinjet touched down on the landing pad atop of Avengers Tower, Wilson stood up. “Okay. Everyone get showered, changed, have a hot meal and something to drink. Tomorrow—”

“It should be today,” Bruce said softly. “I think you’re going to want to look at these sooner rather than later.”

“Are they translated already?” Wilson asked.

“No, but…I saw an image that…” Bruce trailed off, shaking his head. “There’s a visual in there that tells me something important.”

“ETA on the files, J?” Stark asked.

“The summaries can be finished in as soon as three hours,” JARVIS said. Even he sounded uncharacteristically subdued. Bucky wondered if and how Stark had programmed empathy into a machine.

“Then…” Wilson paused for a moment. Then he straightened up in his Captain America stance again. Bucky looked at him and wondered if Wilson was emulating those old pictures of Steve on purpose, or if it was something that came naturally to everyone who was worthy of holding the shield. “Steve. Bucky. Will you give us permission to look at these Project SPARTA files?”

Bucky glanced at Steve and saw both the question and answer in his eyes. He offered a minute nod.

Steve said, “Yes.”

Wilson frowned. “You can take some time to think about it. It’s—”

Steve shrugged. “You already know what it’s about. And knowing what HYDRA’s been up to is important for the mission.” He paused, looking around the plane, making eye contact with every Avenger. “And you’re our team,” he said, quietly. “We can trust you.”

Bruce’s head bowed. Clint’s lip quirked up and he gave a short, sharp salute with two fingers. Wilson smiled. Natasha’s face didn’t change, but her eyes warmed.

And Tony said, “Oh lord, feelings. I’m off to shower and maybe fix myself a drink or six.”

“Tony—” Wilson began, but Tony waved him off.

“That was a joke! That was a joke. I saw your anti-drinking PSA, Cap, no need to get on my case.”

Bucky could really use a drink himself right now, but he hasn’t been able to get drunk since ‘44. Not even a cigarette would calm his nerves. Thanks for that, Zola. Rot in hell.

He made his way off of the plane, following Steve into the locker room. They shed their uniforms mechanically, leaving them in the biohazard laundry bag to get cleaned, and went through their own post-fight weapon checks: Bucky with his guns, Steve with his gauntlets.

Steve finished first, waiting quietly, watching Bucky put away his guns and knives, one by one. When Bucky turned around, their eyes met briefly.

They made their way down to the apartment. After they stepped through the front door, Bucky hesitated in the living room. Steve made it three steps before he halted. He doubled back and took Bucky by the hand, firmly tugging him along to the bathroom.

The blood. The silence. The shower. Suddenly, Bucky felt far too much like the Asset. His whole body shuddered, and Steve paused to look at him.

“Bucky?”

“Steve.” He closed his eyes. Inhaled. Opened them again. “I’m sorry.”

Steve stepped closer to him. He held Bucky’s hands and pulled them towards him, settling them on his own hips, and Bucky’s hands clenched as he leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. “I forgive you,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.” He kissed Bucky, so softly.

“It’s okay,” Bucky mumbled, but he wasn’t really sure what Steve was sorry for. Whatever it was—it was okay.

“We’ll talk later,” Steve promised. “Shower.”

“Shower. Food.” Bucky took a deep breath. “Learning some more f*cked-up HYDRA sh*t. God Almighty…”

“Yeah.” Steve grimaced. Then, he hooked his thumbs under the waistband of Bucky’s pants and pushed them down. Bucky contributed by tugging Steve’s shirt up and over his head.

They undressed each other, clumsy with their inability to let each other go for long, and then stumbled into the shower. The post-battle crash was hitting harder today, along with knowing that something was in those files and their argument and the slaughter that Bucky committed and what he knows now—

He was swaying on his feet as Steve worked shampoo into his hair.

“You can touch me, you know.”

Bucky looked up, blinking.

“I love you,” Steve said softly. “I don’t know why you don’t want to touch me, but—I never not want you to.”

“I—” Bucky grimaced. He could use his words like a normal f*cking human. He wasn’t the Asset. He wasn’t James Buchanan Barnes, but he could be Bucky. “I’m f*cked up.”

“So am I, pal,” Steve said lowly. “We’re both f*cked up. Just come here.”

And Bucky leaned forward, sagging against Steve’s chest, resting his cheek on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and breathed him in, feeling the hot water from the shower drumming onto his skin, feeling Steve’s arms wrap around his middle, holding him close, and he clung on, like Steve was a coffin and he was a whaler, swirling closer and closer to a watery grave. One or maybe both of them was trembling, and so he experimentally dragged his hand down Steve’s spine, and heard a long, shuddery sigh in response.

“’m sorry,” Bucky whispered again. Sorry that he was so f*cked-up Steve couldn’t collapse because he needed to hold him up.

“Quit it,” Steve said, but he was unable to muster any sort of sternness.

They stood like that for a long while.

Eventually, Bucky gathered the strength to pull away. He reached for the shampoo (Enchanted Golden Woods) but Steve grabbed the metal arm in one hand and the little toothbrush with the other. “Let me,” Steve said softly.

“Okay. But I’ll do you afterwards,” Bucky said absently.

“You don’t got the stamina for it,” Steve said. It took Bucky an embarrassingly long time to feel anything other than hurt, but once he got it, he smiled.

“I’ll show you—” He paused long enough to yawn, theatrically, “—stamina.”

Steve grinned, even as he focused on working the bristles of the toothbrush around and around Bucky’s arm, twisting it and bending it this way and that to clean the metal plates.

Once the arm was shiny and clean, he let Steve soap up his body (Sparkling Firefly Forest), watching him through half-lidded eyes as he ran a washcloth down his calves with something that could be reverence if addressed to anyone but Bucky. He thought of devotion, and worship, and he wondered what prank God was playing on them, where he got to venerate a golden idol and Steve had to make do with him.

Steve got to his feet, and it was Bucky’s turn to run his fingers through Steve’s hair, run his hands down his broad back, his shoulders, his arms, to kneel at his feet. He went slowly, examining every bruise, every little cut or burn Steve had; already they were fading a little, but he ran the washcloth over them as gently as he could. He’d caused Steve enough pain today.

When he finished, he remained kneeling for a long moment. Then, he bent forward and pressed a kiss to Steve’s feet, one after another.

“Don’t,” Steve said lowly. “I’m not better than you.”

“You’re Steve,” Bucky mumbled, closing his eyes and leaning forward, resting his forehead on Steve’s knee. “You are.”

“I’m not,” Steve insisted. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn. Just like you.”

Bucky knew that. Bucky knew that more than anyone else in this world. Bucky was there, when Steve was just a little firecracker with more balls than sense. He was stubborn, obstinate, self-righteous, and he always did what he thought was right, no matter how wrong he was. But even his flaws made him special—made him Captain America. Made him—

“You’re a hero.”

Steve knelt down. He pressed their foreheads together again. The shower was still pounding down on them like rain. “And you’re the guy who always has my back. The guy who can keep up with me. The guy—” he choked. “The guy who walked back into hell so he wouldn’t have to leave my side.”

Bucky had nothing to say to that. Instead, he kissed Steve. He felt pressure on his metal hand as Steve took it in his own and squeezed it.

They kissed for a long time, until Steve’s stomach growled, and he pulled away with a sheepish smile. Bucky gave him a half-hearted grin, and they got out of the shower.

The air was still a little tense, but it was easier to breathe, now, as if the shower had tamed some of the flames of their emotions. They went through the motions of heating up enough food for both of them and preparing coffee that had no effects on them but nostalgia.

Bucky watched Steve shovel grilled chicken, broccoli, carrots, and rice into his mouth. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” Steve said.

Bucky stabbed a piece of chicken. “Sap.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You said it first.”

After lunch, they sat on their couch together in silence until there was a knock on the door.

Steve rose to his feet, sighing heavily. He held his hand out. “Ready?”

Bucky took his hand and got up. “Ready.”

He followed Steve. As he always did.

–

Wilson was the one waiting at the door to guide them to the common floors. Instead of going to the conference rooms where they had their briefings, he took them to the living space. The Avengers were sitting on the couches surrounding the television. They had left the loveseat open for Steve and Bucky.

Sitting on the coffee table were six files. As Bucky sat down, his eyes roamed over them.

Project SPARTA. II-1. II-2. II-3. II-4. II-5. II-6.

He felt sick.

Bruce was sitting in the armchair to the left, with Clint was perched on the arm of the chair, arms crossed. Bruce had a purple blanket over his lap and a mug in front of him, and his eyes were darting around the room. Once they sat down, he leaned forward. “You’re welcome to look at the files yourselves,” he said quietly. “But—I took a look at them. So if you’d like, I can…be the one to explain them to you.”

He looked drawn and exhausted, with deep bags under his eyes. His hands were trembling slightly where he had them clenched around the hem of the blanket. He didn’t look nearly this bad earlier.

“Bruce, are you okay?” Steve asked quietly.

Bruce offered them a slightly strained smile. “I’m okay now,” he said. “The, uh, Other Guy didn’t really appreciate what I was reading.”

“Oh.” Steve sounded slightly strangled.

“It’s bad,” Bruce said, grimacing. “But I can do this.”

Steve looked at Bucky, who nodded. “Then yes, please, Bruce. Thank you so much.”

Bruce inclined his head. “Do you two know what IVF is?” At their blank stares, he ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “It stands for in-vivo fertilization. It’s—a process in which a, er, a child-bearing person’s eggs can be gathered and combined with sperm outside of the body, resulting in fertilization. The result can then be implanted into another child-bearing person’s body and develop into a baby.”

Bucky could feel his breath quickening. No. No.

Their expressions must be truly dire, because Bruce winced. “The, um, first child born after being fertilized through IVF was in 1978. Your ovary, Steve, was removed in the early seventies—”

“Because I wasn’t getting pregnant,” Steve said, and he was curling in on himself, and all the Avengers were here, but Bucky desperately needed to touch him, to comfort him and draw comfort into himself. He looped his arm through Steve’s and rested his hand on his thigh, and Steve leaned into him.

“Yes,” Bruce said. “But an egg in an ovary isn’t mature. So they experimented with harvesting mature eggs directly from you, using artificial hormones, to encourage your body to mature eggs out of the typical cycle. With—with that—” and Bruce was having a harder time speaking; Clint put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, “—with sperm they collected from you, Bucky, they—”

“They made children.” Steve closed his eyes. “Good God.”

God ain’t here, Bucky thought, hysterically.

Children.

He gazed at the files on the table and knew.

“The image that I saw that—that clued me in was a pedigree,” Bruce said quietly. The TV flickered, showing a simple series of circles and squares, connected to each other via lines. The circle and square at the top were joined by a line, which radiated downwards and sprouted into five squares and one circle. “It’s a family tree.”

“Six?” a horrified voice whispered. For a moment, Bucky thought it came from Steve, before he realized that it came from himself.

Bruce nodded. “Six,” he said. “They stopped sometime in the eighties. They realized that none of your children showed any inherited strength or affinity for the serum, but theorized that any children that develop inside of Steve may share the serum via the placenta, so they focused on, ah—”

Impregnating Steve. Bucky grimaced, glancing at Steve. His face was slack with horror. But he asked,

“Are any of them—?” before stopping.

Bruce’s face was terribly sorrowful.

A sob, or maybe bile, or maybe his heart, rose up into Bucky’s throat. Six children. Six. HYDRA had somehow made six children out of his and Steve’s bodies and—

They never knew.

“Do you want to learn about them in order from oldest to youngest?” Clint asked. His voice was low and his eyes were dark. “Or learn about them from most f*cked up to least f*cked up.”

“Clint,” Sam said quietly from the couch.

“It’s a fair question,” Steve said humorlessly.

“Tell me in terms of—which ones survived the longest,” Bucky said. The ones who died early were the lucky ones.

Bruce looked down at his hands. “Okay.” He leaned forward and picked up the three files in the middle—II-3, II-4, II-5. “HYDRA was hoping that your children would naturally be super-soldiers,” he said quietly. “Or that they would have some genetic resistance to the serum.” He looked down at the files in his hands. There were tears in his eyes. “These three, D, H, and R, were administered the serum at various points in their development. None of the experiments were successful.”

Bucky held out his hand.

Bruce paused. “Bucky—”

“Let me see,” he said.

Bruce passed the files over.

Bucky opened them, one after another.

ID: Subject D

b.1980 d. 1982

S/D: M/A

Status: Deceased. Failure to accept serum

ID: Subject H

b.1981 d. 1986

S/D: M/A

Status: Deceased. Failure to accept serum

ID: Subject R

b.1982 d. 1997

S/D: M/A

Status: Deceased. Failure to accept serum

They didn’t even have names.

Two. Five. Thirteen.

Their sons didn't even have names.

Something was tugging at the files, but he couldn’t see what it was. He blinked, and felt hot, wet tears falling down his cheeks, saw Steve’s hand on the top of the files. He let go, and Steve put the files on the table and wrapped him up in a hug. When Bucky felt something wet and warm developing on his shoulder, he wrapped his arms around Steve as well and held him as tightly as he could, gripping the back of his shirt.

He heard fabric shifting, and footsteps, and he raised his head, wiping at his eyes with his hand. Wilson was approaching the coffee table, with two glasses of water and a box of disposable tissues under his arm. For some reason, that made Bucky laugh wetly. Steve pulled away, blue eyes rimmed with red, to give him a look. Bucky just shrugged at him, and Steve’s face contorted into something approximating a pained smile.

Wilson put the glasses down on the coffee table, but Bucky held out his hand for the tissue box. He grabbed a handful and gave them to Steve, who dabbed at his eyes and nose briefly. He took a few for himself and wiped at his eyes a second time, then nodded at Bruce. “How about—the others?” His voice was shaking, but he didn’t care. He was gaining and losing a family all at once, he was goddamn allowed to cry.

Bruce looked down. He picked up the II-2 folder. “They didn’t administer the serum to the first two children,” Bruce said quietly. “They wrote that—this one was raised under HYDRA. When he reached adulthood, they told him about the serum and about his—they wrote it as birthright, but that essentially means they told him about you two, and their theories that it would increase his affinity for the serum, and that it would be administered to him.”

“He took it?” Steve asked.

Bruce’s mouth turned down. “He, ah. He committed suicide.”

“Holy sh*t,” Tony muttered. He had been so silent throughout the conversation Bucky almost forgot the others were there. “Was he scared? Couldn’t stand the thought of being the child of Captain America and the Winter Soldier?”

“We might never know,” Natasha murmured.

“Actually.” Bruce ducked his head. “He seemed to—to have had a…a lover. Within HYDRA. His lover’s suicide note is included in the file, too.” He raised his eyes, looking at Steve, then Bucky. “I’ll leave that for you two to read.” He hesitated, then handed the folder to Steve.

Steve flipped it open. Bucky read over his shoulder.

ID: Achilles

b.1980 d. 2000

S/D: M/A

Status: Deceased. Self-terminated

Bucky grimaced at the wording. Steve closed the file, putting it on the coffee table, stacking it carefully on top of the others. He glanced at Bucky.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t—”

Bucky held his hand and squeezed it.

“How are you holding up?” Wilson asked softly.

“Two more,” Steve said grimly. Wilson nodded.

“Bruce?”

Bruce took a deep breath. Clint squeezed his shoulder again. “Two more,” he said.

“Next,” Steve said. He had uncurled, his shoulders back. Facing the assault head-on, like he always did. Bucky put his hand on his back, leaning against his side.

Bruce picked up II-1. “This one—was like the last one, II-2,” he said. “They raised him to adulthood under HYDRA. But they never told him the truth about his background, or tried to give him the serum. He became a HYDRA agent.”

Bucky was learning that it was definitely possible to feel betrayed by someone you never knew.

“He—” Steve growled, and then cut himself off, looking away.

“He died on a mission in 2010,” Bruce said.

Bucky closed his eyes.

Four years ago.

Their oldest son died just four years ago.

After serving HYDRA all his life.

Four years ago. Four years ago meant he was alive when—

He retched.

No no no no no. No no no. No. The odds were—the odds were too great, there was no way, no f*cking way, it wasn’t even worth—wasn’t even worth thinking about—

Someone shoved something hard in his hands. He gagged, again, lowering his head over the—the mixing bowl? But he swallowed, hard, swallowed back the bile, and raised his head, setting aside the bowl so he could lean over and grab the water. He took a sip, coaxed down the bile, coaxed away the thought.

“Bucky?” Steve said softly, and Bucky looked at him—

“I’m fine,” Bucky whispered. “It’s just—a f*cked-up thought occurred to me.” He would never tell Steve about what he just thought of. It was—it wasn’t true, anyways, it was a useless thought, he could just banish it from existence because there was no way it could be true. He bumped against Steve’s side. “One more?”

“One more.” Steve nodded. He set the closed II-1 file folder down onto the coffee table; Bruce must have given it to him while Bucky was—thinking.

“Last one,” Bruce said softly, but it seemed more like he was saying it to himself than to them. He picked up the last folder—II-6—and looked down at it. “This one…the information inside it was corrupted.” He looked up. “But we gathered enough to know that they sent them to the Red Room sometime after they were born in what was probably the eighties, given the birth years of the others. But besides that—nothing. No information at all. When they were born, if they died or not—”

“The Red Room,” Natalia whispered, “might have sent someone to destroy information about their trainee.”

Bruce nodded slowly. “That would make sense.”

Bucky closed his eyes. A daughter. A spiderling in the Red Room. Disappeared into the ether. Dead or alive—who knew. Probably dead, if what Natalia—

Natalia—

Natalia—

His eyes flew open. His head whipped around.

Natalia met his eyes. Her eyes widened a fraction.

“No,” Clint whispered. Because of course he noticed. He had sniper’s eyes, and he knew Natalia the best. “No f*cking way.”

“What?” Tony asked. “What are you—”

Natalia got to her feet and walked out of the room.

–

“She wants to talk to you.”

Bucky sat up so quickly his forehead smacked into Steve’s chin.

“Ow!”

“Ow! Jesus, Buck!”

Clint watched them, bemused, as Bucky rubbed his forehead and Steve rubbed his chin. “Uh, she’s in the gym.”

“Thanks, Clint,” Steve said, working his jaw around a little before he pushed himself to his feet. He offered a hand down to Bucky, who took it and let him pull him up.

Clint was eyeing them closely, and Bucky knew that he was doing the same thing that he’d been doing to Steve for the past half-hour: examining his features, searching for some commonality between his face and Natalia’s in the cheekbones, in the lips, in the brows.

He didn’t think they looked alike. But Steve told him that Bucky didn’t look much like either of his parents, either, so that meant nothing.

Instead of taking the elevator, they took the stairs; the gym was only one floor down from the common floor. When they arrived, Natalia was clearly visible through the glass doors, standing in the center of the room. Her arms were crossed, and she was still.

Steve opened the door. “Natasha,” he said.

“Hey,” she said. Her arms dropped to her sides.

The three of them looked at each other for a long moment.

“Bruce said,” Steve began, “that we could do a test to see if any of us are related.”

“I don’t think you want to test if you and Barnes are related at this point in your lives,” Natalia said. “Ignorance is bliss.”

Bucky smirked, while Steve sighed. “Poor choice of words, but you know what I mean.”

Natalia didn’t smile. “I don’t care to know,” she said. “I will sit for the test if you want me to. But the answer will mean nothing for me, so I don’t need to bother knowing the truth.”

Bucky nodded. He thought that she would say something like that. Steve seemed a little taken aback, but Bucky knew that it was more at the fact that Bucky was right in his prediction, and he just nodded. “Then we’ll respect your wishes,” he said. “If you don’t want to know, we won’t go behind your back to find out for ourselves.”

Natalia blinked. “Thank you,” is all she said.

The gym lapsed into silence again.

What was there to say, when you’d discovered that your teammate may or may not be your secret daughter? When you’d trained her, shot her twice, fought her, and then finally wound up working by her side?

What was there for him to even offer her?

There were thirty of them. Thirty little girls, lined up in two rows, in leotards with their hair tied up in tight buns. One out of those thirty was his daughter.

Jesus.

Natalia shifted. “Would you—” she grimaced, looking away. Her face flashed through several emotions—a sardonic smirk, a small frown, eyebrows knitted together, eyes wide—as if she was trying to figure out what the proper emotion one would wear for a situation like this was. She looked back, and her face was impassive again. “Would you give me a hug.”

Steve stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest, resting his cheek on the top of her head. She looked tiny, surrounded by his arms and buried in her chest and tucked under his chin, tiny and vulnerable in a way that she wasn’t unless she had to be, and Bucky’s vision blurred. He blinked rapidly and joined them, wrapping around them both, his metal arm around Steve and his flesh arm around Natalia, and he bent his head forward and closed his eyes, as if he could protect them from the f*cked-up world that brought the three of them to this moment, standing in an empty gym.

Exactly thirty seconds passed before Natalia spoke again. “You do have really nice tit*.”

Steve chuckled, looking upwards; he was blinking rapidly now, too. Bucky looked at him, at the line of his jaw and the curve of his cheekbone and the glint of his hair, and said, “That’s why I married him.”

Steve rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Ain’t your wife, Barnes,” he said.

“You’ll make an honest man out of me someday, sweetheart,” Bucky said, patting his ass, and Steve wiggled one arm free to slap him across the back of the head. Natalia laughed and slipped out of the hug. She smiled at them, a genuine smile that crinkled her eyes, but it faded after only a moment.

“I would prefer it if we didn’t discuss this again,” she said.

“Of course,” Steve said easily, guilelessly. Bucky nodded.

Natalia gave them another smile, weaker than the last, then left the gym.

Steve looked at Bucky. Bucky looked at Steve.

“We should go to our apartment,” Steve said quietly. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Bucky nodded again.

–

Neither of them sat down. This seemed like something that should be done standing up.

“Can I go first?” Steve asked.

“Sure,” Bucky said. He only had a vague idea of what he wanted to say, anyways. And all the fight’s gone out of him, after the mission and the revelations.

“Okay.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, huffing out a sigh. “I’m sorry for not telling you. Well, I’m not sorry for waiting to tell you, but I should have known that you’d remember and be hurt that I kept it from you. And I am really sorry for hurting you and making you feel like I don’t trust you.”

It was such a goddamn Steve apology that Bucky almost wanted to smile. But he had his own apologies to make. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “Sorry for—”

“If you’re apologizing for what led up to that, I don’t wanna hear it,” Steve interrupted. Bucky reached out to chuck his chin.

“Don’t interrupt me,” he said sternly, and Steve bowed his head a little in apology. “Well. I am sorry for that. But I’m mostly sorry for—being so mad at you. You have a right to keep things from me. Especially—if. They’re things that suck.”

But Steve was already scowling, shaking his head. “Don’t feel sorry. We escaped together, and HYDRA is to blame for punishing you like that,” he said. His expression softened, like a hissing cat’s fur settling. “I shouldn’t keep your memories from you, though. They’re yours, and I shouldn’t’ve—shouldn’t deliberately keep things from you. Shouldn’t make that decision for you, ‘bout whether you’re ready to hear them or no.”

“That’s…” Bucky trailed off. He tried to argue that that’s not the issue at hand, here, but—it sort of was.

“It is,” Steve said, taking his hand in his—the metal hand, because he never hesitated to touch either of Bucky’s hands. He clasped it in his own. “I promise I’ll be honest and—and actively forthcoming with you in the future.”

“Steve. You don’t have to promise that,” Bucky mumbled.

“I want to,” and Steve had steely-eyed determination radiating off of him. “Because you’re my partner. And I know I can rely on you when we make decisions about our future together.”

Bucky could feel heat prickling the corners of his eyes. “sh*t, Steve. Come here.” He tugged on their joined hands, pulling Steve closer, and Steve came willingly.

They hugged each other, leaning on each other. Bucky closed his eyes, resting against Steve’s shoulder, feeling him do the same. “You’re okay?” he whispered. “After what they—”

“I’m okay, Buck, really,” Steve said softly. “It hurt like hell, but—in a weird way, all the sh*t HYDRA did just sort of melts together. None of it is worse than knowing what they did to you.”

Bucky choked on a little sob, because that was one-hundred-percent Steven Grant Rogers, too. Blacken his eye and split his lip and he’ll come up swinging, madder than an adder and ready to fight. Land a blow on Bucky and all of that rage cooled and hardened into flinty hatred, rock-solid and steady, until Bucky was safe or you were dead or both.

Of course, Bucky’d be a damn hypocrite if he didn’t acknowledge that he was the same.

“That’s ‘bout how I feel,” Bucky mumbled. “I wanted them to die because of what they did to you—but after learning about that, I want them to suffer.”

“I saw,” Steve said simply, and Bucky felt an icy core form in his stomach, that he was enough of a monster to do that to living human beings and, even worse, that Steve witnessed it all. He tried to pull back, but Steve’s grip on him was steady and firm. “It’s f*cked up, but—I get it. I want them to die because of what they did to you. But I want them to suffer because of—our—our kids.”

There it was.

“We had kids,” Bucky whispered.

“Six kids. Good lord.” Steve laughed, wetly. “They’re not ours, not in any way that really matters, but—”

“But they’re ours.” Now Bucky was crying again. “sh*t.”

“We’ll do something for them. To say goodbye.”

“Yeah, we will.”

After that, they had nothing more to say.

–

A week later, they welcomed Natasha out onto their balcony.

She looked around at the little planters Bucky had set up outside: onions, carrots, the squash that was growing out of control. Her lip twitched slightly before she looked back at them. Her eyes lingered on where he and Bucky were holding hands, and the twitch developed into a soft, sorrowful smile.

“I asked Bruce to do a paternity test.”

Steve just nodded, while Bucky was still. Just like a week ago, Bucky had accurately predicted what Natasha would do. Last week, Steve had wondered whether it was a sign of some sort of blood relationship between them, some sort of fatherly intuition, because if anyone would be such a great father he’d be able to read his long-lost kid’s mind it would be Bucky. Now that time had passed and the open wound had—started to heal, just a little, or maybe just didn't feel as raw, he could more rationally think of it as a sign of how similar Bucky and Natasha were, or how well Bucky could read people and guess their next moves.

Natasha looked down. “Congratulations,” she said blandly. “You are not the fathers.”

She’s gonna be disappointed, Bucky had muttered into his chest. And it was a great indicator of just how disappointed Natasha was that she even showed it at all, in the flatness of her voice, in the downward cast of her eyes.

“That’s unfortunate to hear,” Steve said quietly. “We would have been honored to have you as a daughter.”

“But we’re even prouder to call you our friend,” Bucky continued. “You don’t get to choose your blood family. But you get to choose your friends.”

“And take it from Bucky. His dad was kind of a dick.” That earned him a firm elbow in the ribs and a cracked smile from Natasha, a slash of white in red. She looked up, shaking her head fondly.

“Well. At least we escaped Tony making fun of us for the rest of our lives.” The joke fell somewhat flat, but Steve grinned at her anyways.

“Dodged a real bullet there.”

After that, Natasha made her way to the door. She set her hand on the sliding door’s handle and hesitated. Finally, she turned around, with an indescribable expression on her face.

“There was a Widow…” she trailed off. “She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She was better than me in every way possible.” She made deliberate eye contact with Bucky first, then Steve. “If anyone survived, and is successfully living and working without notice, it would be her.”

Steve and Bucky exchanged a look.

“If she pops up on the radar, we’ll give her the same choice we gave you,” Steve said lowly. “But we won’t go actively looking for her, if it seems like she doesn’t want to be found.”

Natasha’s lip twitched. “That’s what she would have wanted.”

After she left, Steve turned to Bucky, and Bucky mirrored him until they were facing each other.

“So,” Steve said hesitantly.

“So,” Bucky parroted.

“What now?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don't know," he said, and then took both of Steve's hands in his, tugging him closer. “But we'll figure it out together.”

Steve leaned forward to accept his kiss. Of everything that had to happen, at least he had Bucky.

He didn't say it out loud, but he thought that Bucky was thinking the same.