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beanariei've got this whole blog here doing nothing and all these bits of fics taking up space so voila! heads up these posts will be Very Rough! i'm not editing shit.
let's start with the end, part two (part one is here), mostly written in 2012.
this was my attempt at doing an epic plotty thing that resolved all the dangling participles left from avengers. because i am allergic to anything requiring, like, organized thought, i ended up chopping it in half, making it just a story about steve gradually developing relationships with each of the group. this appeared to have been very confusing for readers. it got like 5x as many hits as the preceding fic in the series and less than half the kudos. anyway i'm just proud of my stucky flashback scene, which i swear to GOD i wrote in 2013.
-
In the car, just the two of them, it becomes painfully obvious that they don't know each other as well as two people who share the same space probably should. A few awkward attempts at small talk have Pepper's cheeks flushing with chagrin.
"I'm sorry," she says. "The only people I ever deal with are colleagues, underlings, or Tony. I'm a little out of practice."
To him that sounds both lonely and exhausting, but she doesn't seem unhappy. Just a little tired. Definitely in need of a break. "Don't feel like you have to keep me entertained," Steve says gently. "I don't actually mind the quiet."
Her smile is incandescent. As he ducks his head, she reaches out and squeezes his hand. "You're a keeper, Steve Rogers."
After that Pepper spends most of the ride uptown flipping through a fashion magazine the size of a coffee table book. Her spine starts out almost painfully straight. By increments, she relaxes, until she's melted against the seat.
Steve does a rough sketch of her on his phone's drawing app. It'll be on paper tonight.
~
The zoo staff actually let some of the peacocks roam free, a fact that becomes evident when Steve and Pepper take a breather between the Bug Carousel and the Dancing Crane Café. A handful of grammar school kids in matching fluorescent green t-shirts crowd around one of the birds, chattering on top of each other and snapping pictures with colorful plastic cameras.
Pepper smiles at the group as she sips from a bottle of water. There's a wistfulness to it, almost a sadness, and Steve wonders if this is the life she had planned for herself--she strikes him as someone who knew what she wanted very early on--or if there might have been more to the picture that ended up falling by the wayside. Steve had never been much for planning in the long-term. Finish art school. Maybe get a job as a cartoonist or an illustrator. But he got sick a few too many times, doctor's bills took away his tuition money, and he had to drop out. Then came the war, and, well. Here he is. Even if he'd had plans, they would have been reduced to smithereens.
Pepper's phone goes off. Hers uses a standard ring, rather than a song from the radio or some kind of sound effect. Her mouth turns down when she looks at the screen. "There was supposed to be a no-phone rule for today, but I'd really like to take this," she says apologetically, then smiles in response to Steve's shrug. "Could you go in and grab me a salad? They should have something green in there."
To give her a little more time, he stops in the gift shop first, lingering over an impressive array of stuffed animals. At the sound of the school kids approaching outside, he hands a few bills to the woman at the register and asks her to let them pick out whatever they want.
"No, it's- I know it feels like a double standard, but it really isn't. Yes, we live together. Technically. Ask me how many times he's left the building with me, just the two of us. I'm one of his oldest friends and I'm blessed with a boyfriend in a flying suit of armor. But he won't do it. I'm sorry, Betty. You know better than anyone how stubborn he can be, I can't exactly-" She looks up, spies him there, and holds up one finger. "Look, I'm scheduled to be in DC the twenty third and the twenty fourth. I'd love it if you could come meet me for dinner or drinks. Let me know, okay?"
[[And then Pepper takes Steve to buy a car.]]
[[Avengers mission 2.0. Thor returns to tell them he sourced the Chitauri back to this The Other dude, and also "I have found something I did not expect. Agent Coulson." Everybody goes okay what.]]
"Director?" Steve prods.
Fury presses his lips together. "Agent Coulson's body disappeared from the morgue around the same time the scepter vanished from the evidence locker. Prevailing theory is the scepter left some trace of itself behind when Loki stabbed him, so when whoever was controlling the Chitauri pulled it out of our world, they got him, too."
Clint makes a guttural sound in his throat.
"You have something to say, Agent Barton?"
"Just hoping you understand how lucky you are that you're on a screen right now," Clint says. Natasha wraps her fingers around his wrist. "Sir."
"I'm going to forget you said that. Listen, you all need to stop looking at me like I'm the only who can't see my devil horns. We had people looking into it, people who weren't nearly as close to the situation. And you know what? If he'd turned out to be a zombie, you would have thanked me for sparing you having to cut his head off."
Thor coughs a little, and Steve turns to him to quietly say, "Flesh-eating animated corpses." As Thor's eyes widen, he follows it up with, "Completely fictional, as far as I know. I'll show you some footage later." Thor might enjoy George Romero movies. Clint and Natasha certainly do.
"We wouldn't have thanked you," Natasha says.
[[SPACE TRAVEL. ON THE BIFROST. They find the place where Coulson was supposedly being held, and they bust it up.]]
"Agent Coulson is not on this ship," Thor says, and falls silent, like that's all there is to say.
Natasha starts looking from Thor to the airlock and back again, like she's seriously considering something. Before she can act on anything, Steve asks, "Where is he then?"
Another round of chittering from the more-alien alien and Thor turns to them. "I am told that he absconded with one of their transport vehicles."
"And went where with it?" Clint asks.
"He had to know he couldn't get back to Earth in that," Tony says.
"Not Earth," Thor says, "but there is a small planetoid with tiny animals and vegetation. And caves."
[[Tracking Coulson to a cave on this tiny Little Prince type of planet. The aliens follow close behind.]]
He is dressed kind of like Bruce after a Hulk-out, in the tattered, blood-stained remains of the suit he was wearing when Loki ran him through all those months ago. There is a rock in his right hand roughly the size of a baseball. He tosses it a few inches into the air and lets it fall back to his palm, over and over.
In the distance, Steve can hear the Hulk roaring as he does something awful to someone who probably deserves it. It's accompanied by a crack of thunder.
"Agent Coulson?" Steve says. Coulson's expression doesn't change. Steve doesn't know what the man thinks he's looking at, a mirage, shape-shifters, or what. But this is not joy at being rescued, that's for sure.
"You can go on ahead, Steve," Natasha says. Her gaze is on Coulson, and it doesn't waver.
"Yeah, we got this," Clint says.
"You're sure?" Steve asks.
"Go make sure the Hulk doesn't wreck anything we don't want wrecked, Cap. We'll see you in a few."
Steve turns around as he's walking away. Natasha is pulling off her gloves and dropping them on the ground. The guns soon follow. Her hands stay up and non-threatening the whole time. Clint is doing the same with his quiver and bow.
"Either of you get your heads bashed in," Steve says under his breath, knowing they'll hear it over the radio, "I am leaving you here to serve as an example to the others."
"I like that plan," Tony chimes in. "And I will fully enable it. I'll make up embarrassing stories for how you died, too."
[[After all is said and done, Thor goes to New Mexico, but he comes back a lot because it's boringer in the sticks & he's got nothing to do. And Coulson takes a long leave of absence, on a tropical island or something. He's earned it. He, also, comes back fairly quickly. I think. I haven't decided yet.]]
"Kennedy." Clyde Rembert grimaces as he slides two cards facedown to the center of the table. "Razzle-dazzle and not much else. Tell me he's not your favorite."
"LBJ wasn't any better," Steve points out. "I don't understand why we even went to Vietnam. His mishandling of that situation got a lot of Americans killed. "
Sam deals two cards to Rembert. "His domestic policy was the most progressive since FDR. And he passed the civil rights legislation Kennedy had been dragging his feet about."
"I like Truman," Steve says.
Sam smiles like he isn't surprised at all.
"Help me," he says.
Steve kneels down beside them. He presses two fingers against the underside of Rembert's jaw, not that he needs to. The man took three shots, all in vital places.
Sam falls back on his haunches. "I know," he says. His face goes tight, scrunched up with distress. "Goddammit."
"The only way to help him now is to find his killer."
Sam nods vaguely.
"Sam, I need you to concentrate. Find the guy running away from us right now."
[[They lose him after a foot chase. James salutes crisply before he takes off and it jogs something loose. Not in an "omg BUCKY" way, more in an itchy, "there's something off about this dude" way. Steve starts looking into things.]]
Steve stands at the doorway of Tony's gym, viewing the inhabitants of the boxing ring with probably more trepidation than he'd like to be showing.
"How exactly did this come about?" he mutters to Clint.
"Hill may have mentioned something about how Bruce is not always gonna be green when things get hairy," Clint answers. "And then Tony..."
"Tony," Steve says, nodding. That's pretty much what he expected. "And the reason why he has to be the one in the ring with him?"
"He ran through all the rest of us one by one and explained why we wouldn't work. Size, fitness level, being an opponent the Hulk might decide he wants for himself..."
"Can't believe Bruce said yes to this." The Hulk could snap Tony's neck with a back-handed smack, and Tony doesn't have Natasha's reflexes, Clint's years of training, or any kind of enhanced metabolism.
Clint doesn't disagree. "It seemed like a lesser of two evils situation," he admits.
Tony and Bruce circle around each other, and Steve decides to back off a little. It wouldn't help Bruce's anxiety level to see him hovering just outside the ropes, waiting for something to go wrong. They usually get a warning period of about ten to twenty seconds before the Hulk comes out. Steve can take a seat and trust that he'll be there in time to prevent any accidents.
Abandoning her free weights, Natasha sits down beside him. "Heard you had a run-in with an assassin in a black mask," she says. "Did you get a look at his hands?"
"Yeah." Steve narrows his eyes at her. "One of them looked strange, metal." The sound of flesh impacting on flesh draws his attention back to the ring.
Tony is staring at Bruce with an appalled expression. "That's what you're leading with, a slap. Really. No, it's cool. Just let me take a few minutes off to the side to craft a couple of dueling pistols. 'Cause that's what you were going for, right? I don't know whose honor I besmirched lately, but I'm sure I deserved to get called out like this."
Clint seems almost impressed. "How are you still talking that much with the mouth-guard in?"
"Talent!" Tony bounces around his side of the ring. "Come on, Mr. Green-Jeans-"
Bruce removes his mouth-guard, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "I was wondering when you'd bust that one out."
"-hit me with another princess-y slap, Physics. Go ahead."
Natasha rolls her eyes at Steve and resumes their conversation. "He's called the Winter Soldier. At least, he was when I knew him. Not sure where he was from, Canada or the States, judging by what I could see and hear. But they were very skilled at manipulating that sort of thing to suit their needs. He could've been anything, Scandinavian, English, Australian..."
"Doesn't give me much to go on."
"I'm sorry." She shrugs. "They treated the man like a hard-drive, formatting and transferring in new intel as needed. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost all memories of me." Her tone is very matter-of-fact. This is something she came to terms with long ago. "So there's not much I can tell you about how he is now. I only know that he was kind to me, for as long as they allowed him to be."
"They ever send him after you?"
"No, he just, he disappeared." She brushes hair out of her face. "Which was standard. They placed him in cold stasis after every mission. After Clint recruited me, I tried to find where they were keeping him, but it proved more difficult than I anticipated."
Steve leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Might've been easier if you hadn't tried to do it on your own."
She shakes her head, though more to herself than Steve. "Clint stuck his neck out for me, and they chose not to punish him for it. Much." Her expression is hard, and Steve looks over to where Clint is instructing Bruce on head-locks. "I couldn't ask him to place himself in that position again. Especially not for someone I didn't think we'd be able to turn."
Steve doesn't bother asking why she would still go after this man whose name she didn't even know, who she didn't think would ever fight for the good guys. The only thing that mattered was getting her friend out of there. "So what makes him different from you?"
"Time is a big one," she says. "They had him for at least twenty years before I was even born, Steve. His programming goes down to the bone." She gets up and approaches the ring. "Hey, Tony, you know you drop the corresponding shoulder before you punch. Stop telegraphing your moves."
"Telegraph this, sweetheart," he says, flicking the underside of his chin with the back of his hand. Taking advantage of the distraction, Bruce hooks his arm around Tony's neck and brings him down.
Clint applauds. "Good start, Doc."
Thor and Pepper emerge from the elevator, and Thor lets out a cheerful "I get winner!" An expression of horror flashing across her face, Pepper speaks quietly into his ear. "I get whoever is amenable to sparring with me," he amends, looking to her for approval. He puffs up slightly when she smiles and nods.
~
[[Thor & Tony doing a gig for Coast Guard/Port Authority. Something goes wrong and Tony is ranting about Fing government and what BS, seriously. And Steve takes the other side, like "They've been at this a lot longer than you. Put on your big boy pants and admit you were wrong."]]
[Natasha & Clint track down info. The Winter Soldier was just hired again, this time by an American, a highly ranked dude in the military. No one knows who. Their informant was like, "Uh, all you fat, privileged Americans look the same to me. Sarz."]]
[[Except Tony was in the right, oops. There's video footage from another angle that comes out proves he wasn't to blame. Steve apologizes fumblingly. And Tony just looks at him like, what are you even talking about right now. And Tony announces the three of them are going to lunch.]]
"Didn't realize you were actually worried about that," she says. "I could have told you he wasn't holding on to a grudge."
"Oh, really?"
"Take a look at the people Tony keeps close, Steve. Notice any common threads? They're all well-practiced in telling him he's full of it. Even Happy."
"We're going to grab a bite. Greenback and I haven't seen the sun in roughly thirty-six hours. Pepper'll be pissed if she gets back from Canberra all tan and her men are vampires. The Anne Rice kind, not the bedazzled kind. Though the idea of being able to blind someone with my naked ass does hold a certain appeal."
Steve chokes out a laugh, which he knows was Tony's intention.
"I know you're in, Rogers. You know how impolite it is to turn down food. How about you, lady?"
Natasha shakes her head. "Thor got in this morning. Clint made me promise the next time he and Thor occupied the same space, we're teaching him Charades."
"Charades," Tony repeats.
She shrugs. "Helped pass the time during ops. Especially when we were separated but still in each other's sight-lines."
"So your little fit of war games nostalgia can't wait two hours?"
"Clint's moving out again. His flight leaves at five," she says, smiling without teeth. "Not that it's any of your business."
Steve catches a quick glint of red light reflecting off of the Stark Industries button on Bruce's lapel and suddenly his thoughts coalesce into one name.
General Ross.
Steve pushes Bruce toward the ground with a flat hand to the other man's spine, and the shot that would have gone straight through Bruce's heart ends up slightly higher.
"Inside now," Steve shouts. Together he and Tony haul Bruce back into the lobby and behind the empty receptionist desk.
"Bruce?" Tony says, kneeling down. "Bruce, goddammit. Wake up."
Steve leaves them there, walking away a few steps to calls Clint.
"What the hell just happened?" Clint says. "Traffic stopped dead right in front of our building. I count six simultaneous fender-benders."
Bruce's eyes flutter open and he lets out a moan.
"Bruce took a hit from a sniper rifle," Steve says.
"Why don't I see the Hulk?" Clint asks.
"He's not out yet," Steve says, plowing right through Clint's swearing. "The bullet came from South-Southeast, I think. You and Natasha need to track the trajectory using JARVIS's security footage, all right? Get Thor to take you wherever this came from and find this guy."
As Steve stows the phone, Tony is squawking. "Transform outside? We're not taking you outside with a sniper out there, dumbass. Anger to the surface, now. Go on." Tony shakes his head in response to something Steve can't make out. "I could give two shits about my pretty building, Bruce. The people in it will be fine. We'll make sure the other guy doesn't get too unfriendly with the load-bearing walls. Okay? Don't worry about us."
JARVIS butts in to ask for clarification about the security footage. It takes a few moments for the AI to be satisfied. Then JARVIS informs him that Thor has taken off with Natasha and Clint. Steve looks over just in time to see Tony raise one fist over Bruce's chest. "Tony!" Steve shouts. "Wait."
Bruce lets out a cry of pain that instantly turns deeper, darker, and the Hulk gives Tony a light shove that launches him six feet into the air.
Moving his head from side to side to get out the kinks in his neck, Tony takes out a handkerchief and wipes Bruce's blood off his hands. "Let's never do that again. Okay? New team rule."
Steve eyes the Hulk warily. Bruce didn't quite want him out, so Steve isn't sure what to expect. But after the big guy turns around, he simply stops.
"Hulk," Steve says, unease growing in the pit of his stomach as the Hulk blinks at him slowly. "You should really-"
The Hulk falls and goes still, like a puppet with its strings cut, like the Chitauri that day.
"What the fucking hell." Tony scrambles to the Hulk's side and puts his hand over the giant nose, letting out a loud exhale. "Jesus. Sleeping."
"They knocked him out?"
"Had to be a sedative on that bullet," Tony says, running his fingertips over the bullet hole that used to be there. "One way ticket to the bloodstream. Clearly it was triggered by the transformation, otherwise Bruce never would have woken up."
"Failsafe," Steve says.
"Yeah, exactly. To keep the Hulk from pursuing if he didn't get him in one shot. Or, alternately, to stay chill and compliant in one spot and await transport. Smart guy." Tony lifts his head. "How do you think Bruce would react if I told him he's not allowed to de-Hulk until we bag this son of a bitch?"
Steve offers Tony a hand up. "Thank God it wasn't poison," he says, looking down. There are mottled copper stains down the left side of the Hulk's chest.
"Wouldn't work. His system overpowers and metabolizes anything that might try to attack it. A sedative, though. It's shiftier. The body's supposed to sleep anyway, right? It gets the job done by sneaking in under the radar." One of Tony's hands curls into a fist and uncurls. "We need to find the lab that made this and raze it to the ground before they figure out how to sneak anything else in."
"Also the shooter," Steve says.
"Haven't forgotten about him," Tony says in a low growl.
Steve's phone rings again.
"Two pieces of intel," Natasha says. "One, we have visual confirmation. It was the Winter Soldier. Thor is still in pursuit."
"Those sirens sound really close, Widow," Steve remarks. He hears another, fainter, sound, a wheezing, like an old radiator.
"We were two blocks from Bellevue. This is against protocol, but- but I'm not waiting. Fucking... no."
"Natasha?" Steve glances at Tony. "What was the second piece of intel?"
"And two," Natasha says, sounding strained. "He's using armor-piercing bullets." The sirens are getting louder. They nearly drown out what she says next. "Went through Hawkeye's Kevlar like it was tissue paper."
The next thing Steve does is call Sam and tell him to stay the hell out of Midtown until further notice.
~
"Are we agreed that this is Ross pulling the strings?" Steve says.
"Oh, he's the prime suspect, definitely," Tony says. He looks grateful to have something to concentrate on. Ordinarily they'd leave one member behind and the rest would be out there looking for the shooter. But today Steve knew with almost 100 percent certainty they would lose someone else if they didn't stop and regroup. Right now they're about as safe as they can be, in this windowless hospital waiting room with SHIELD guarding the area, but they've had nothing to distract them from their thoughts.
Bruce is slumped in one of the seats, pale and shivering from the combined effects of shock and the sedative hangover. "So it's my turn for my problems to put everyone in danger," he says, taking careful sips from a small glass of water. "Could've sworn it said Natasha on the schedule."
"Well, the Winter Soldier is sort of my ex," Natasha says, touching his arm. "Sorry."
"That's okay." He pats her hand. "I'm sure you wouldn't have let things go that far if you knew he'd be shooting several of your friends at some indeterminate point in the future."
"I didn't have friends back then," she says, in that off-handedly blunt way she has of dropping devastating details about her life. So much of the time she's like an anvil covered in velvet. "Or family. Just him."
And later, there was just Clint. No one says it, but they're all thinking it.
Without warning, Bruce slides out of his seat to the floor. "Okay," he says, when everyone has a problem with this. "I'm okay. Just dizzy. The floor, it moves less." He lists to one side until he's leaning against the wall.
Steve and Tony share a look.
"I'd like to think I'm warmer than the floor." Natasha smoothly settles next to Bruce and slowly guides him away from the wall and closer to her. Within a minute or two, he's sprawled across her lower half.
"Thor doesn't do stealth missions," Bruce says quietly. "He probably lost the Soldier hours ago and can't find his way back."
"He would have called," Steve reminds him, keeping his voice low.
Bruce swallows. "Not if he's-"
"Bruce." Natasha covers his forehead with her hand. "Close your eyes. You'll feel better when you wake up."
"Never do," Bruce replies. Tony walks out the door.
Steve finds him in the hallway, breathing hard, his eyes wet.
"Hey," Steve says. "He feels like hell, and the guy who almost assassinated him just blew away one of his friends." He can't say he knows for sure what's going on in Bruce's head, but now is not a good time to be judging his general state of mind. "Give him a break."
Tony nods, bonelessly, wordlessly.
"Okay?" Steve says.
Tony pushes at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "God, this day. Safe to assume they haven't stashed a bar or microbrewery anywhere in this building, huh?"
Steve gives Tony's shoulder a squeeze. They all want to believe Bruce is all right when he isn't being shot, knocked out, and hunted like an animal.
~
Forty-five minutes later, Bruce stirs, swallowing heavily, and he runs for the restroom. When he gets back, he seems a bit more awake, more present. He'd likely improve even more if he hulked out, but no one's letting the guy outdoors any time soon.
AD Hill's call gives them something to do other than watch Bruce avoid everyone's eyes. Steve puts her on speaker phone.
"I've got a lead on Thor," she says. "There's a report from the third precinct."
"Third?" Steve says. That feels important for some reason.
Tony frowns. "Isn't that where the, uh, captain-"
"Thinks all we're good for is destroying the city and causing collateral damage," Natasha finishes. "Yeah, that's the third."
"Well, they've been holding him for the last two hours," Hill says, and ends the call.
"I'll get the car and swing by the precinct." Steve looks around the room. "Um..." Even with SHIELD there, he doesn't feel right leaving.
The door opens, making everyone jump.
"Rhodey?" Tony says, brightening up and pulling his friend into a hard embrace. "Well, fuck me. Good news for a change."
"Good news is my middle name," Rhodey says amiably, pounding Tony on the back and letting go. He raises an eyebrow at Bruce. "You look like shit, Harvard."
Bruce's laughter is thin and weak, but there doesn't seem to be any bitterness to it. "In my defense, I just had two things done to me that probably would have killed anyone else in this room."
"Excuses, excuses." Rhodey rolls his eyes.
"Right?" Tony says cheerfully.
A shadow passes over the door. Steve leaves the room with a nod to Natasha. Coulson is standing there with shades on, his lips pressed together.
"Agent Coulson," Steve says in greeting.
He hands Steve a phone. "New tech," he says. "Won't screw with the hospital equipment."
Steve takes the phone. "Hello?"
"Hey, Steve."
"Sam? What have they got you doing?"
"I'm your eye in the sky, Cap. Seventeenth floor, anyway. That's as high up as I could go. Gives me a better radius. I'd have you come up and keep me company, but I'm trying to concentrate."
Steve pulls at the neck of his t-shirt. "I thought I told you to stay out of this."
"Rogers. You know if it'd been my brother or my nephew, you would've been right here," he says. "Go bail out your Viking."
"It's okay, Captain," Coulson says, reclaiming his phone. "We'll keep the area secure."
~
Steve glances at his passenger and starts the car.
Now they've got Thor back. This should make Bruce a little less defeatist, anyway.
Though he's less Thor than usual, even taking Clint into account. And his story doesn't add up.
"Why didn't you fly off again?" Steve asks.
"There were innocents present and the police had their weapons drawn," Thor says. "I did not wish to escalate the situation." His face and arms are smeared with dried blood from wounds already healed over, and maybe some he inflicted on the bad guy.
Steve grips the wheel and nods, waiting for the rest of it.
"I have failed in my task," Thor says finally.
There it is. "Because he got away, you mean?" Steve asks, and Thor just looks out the window. "He got away from me a few months ago. If he hadn't, Clint wouldn't be where he is right now." Even as he says it, he has the hypocritical thought that Sam better not blame himself for any of this.
Thor doesn't say anything for about ten blocks, and then, "Do you believe he will live?"
"I'm not a doctor, buddy," Steve says. They haven't even heard what the doctors think. "But I wouldn't count him out just yet."
[[After they get word that the doctors still don't know for sure, Steve and Natasha go back to the Tower to grab clothes for everyone. While they're there, Steve asks JARVIS to go through all the SHIELD info on the Winter Soldier and it's really painfully obvious that no one has a photo. Natasha helps Steve do a police sketch of the Winter Soldier]]
"His jaw should be more square. Also he has a cleft in his chin," she says, placing a finger down the middle of her own chin to demonstrate.
That's when he starts getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The roiling only gets worse as they go on. By the time the sketch is completed, he can barely breathe.
"Hey," she says, her eyes concerned.
He can't answer her directly. Putting this into words is far, far beyond him. "JARVIS? Can you show us a photograph of the Howling Commandos? As high-definition as you can find."
"Would I be correct in assuming you would like to see the image of one in particular?"
"Yes," Steve chokes out.
JARVIS complies, lighting up the television with a large photo Steve doesn't remember taking. He and Bucky are in their dress uniforms. Steve looks like he's trying to be serious. Bucky's grin is wide and shameless; he never cared much about decorum. Natasha covers her mouth with her hand.
"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th Infantry," JARVIS supplies helpfully. "Officially killed in action during a mission with the Howling Commandos in Austria, 1945."
"You said they had him for a long time," Steve reminds her, feeling light-headed.
"Steve, I had no idea," she says, her voice thick. "None. I hope you can believe me."
Steve can only stare at her. "What? Of course."
She smiles to herself. It isn't a pretty smile, and the quiet laugh is even uglier. "God, you really have no clue what I'm capable of, who I used to be. Do you?"
"I know who you are." He thinks about the look on her face as Bruce fell asleep on her, the way she sounded as she dragged Clint to the hospital. "What matters more than that?"
Then it hits him so hard the world loses focus, and it's really good that his arms are around her because she's holding him up when his knees go. Bucky's alive, and he's a remorseless killer.
"Steve?" she says, letting him go.
"Cancel the contract," he blurts out. "That's what we need to concentrate on. Bruce- Bruce is still in danger. There must be some way, some code or something. Clients must have wanted to back out in the past."
"Contracts can be nullified," she allows. "By his handlers. It can be done by the client directly, as well, though I've never seen it happen."
"So we need Ross." Steve runs his hands through his hair. "How the hell do we get Ross?"
~
Betty Ross is even more beautiful than her photograph.
But then, they say women are supposed to be prettier when they're pregnant. The glow and what have you.
"Thank you for meeting with us, Dr. Ross," Steve says, handing her a mug of tea.
She wraps her fingers around the handle, giving him a shade of what is probably a traffic-stopping smile. "When Captain America asks you to do something, you do it," she says. Her smile fades. "Listen, I know that you're friends with Bruce, is he...?"
Steve is quick to reassure her. "He's all right," he says, and she lets out a relieved breath.
"It's just that your father seems to wish otherwise," Natasha says.
"Oh, God. What has he done now?"
After they tell her, Betty's immediate reaction is, "What do you need me to do? Does it involve killing my father myself? Because I think I'm at that point."
"You can't kill the general," Natasha says, an amused glint in her eye. She likes this woman. "We need him to call off the contract on Bruce's life. Do you know where he is?"
"Oh, yes," she says. "And I'm going with you."
[[Steve & Natasha bring Betty on Tony's jet to find Ross's cabin on Lake Michigan.]]
Steve's head dips forward against his will, and he straightens immediately, panicked.
"When was the last time you slept, Rogers?"
Betty makes a surprised noise, almost like a hiccup.
"It kicked, didn't it?" Natasha asks.
"Yeah." She ducks her head, flushing. "Listen, I know you think I'm a horrible person."
"Why? For moving on? Just because he hasn't doesn't mean you can't."
"You have to understand. I love Bruce more than I've ever loved anyone."
"More than the father of your baby?" Natasha asks. Steve winces.
"Timothy and I were friends. I was sad, and scared, and so tired of my calls being ignored I stopped trying. And then..." She gestures at her stomach. "He asked me to marry him. I haven't said yes. Haven't said no, either." Betty crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself. "Bruce doesn't have enough faith in himself to be with me on my own. Imagine how he'd react to a baby."
"Is that what you want?" Natasha asks. "To give up on him?"
"What I want is to turn back the clock and stop his accident from ever happening."
"But that's not possible. That kind of thinking isn't constructive."
"Fine," Betty says. "I want Bruce, giant green warts and all. But it's not just about what I want anymore."
"No, it really isn't," Natasha says. "Sounds like you've made your decision."
Betty bites her lip.
Natasha puts her hand over Betty's, not saying a word, while the other woman cries.
"You know, it'll be okay," he says.
"Captain?"
"Bruce has people looking out for him. You need to take care of yourself and your baby."
[[They find Ross, and Betty tells Steve & Natasha to wait outside while she talks to her dad.]]
"We're not telling Bruce any of this," she says.
"He'll find out at some point, if he's still keeping tabs on her, which he probably is. The birth announcement or the engagement will pop up on Google. Wouldn't it be better to hear it from us?"
"Okay, but not now. Two weeks from when this is over."
"Why two weeks?"
"Why not?"
"Any news?" Steve asks.
"Hey, Steve."
"Sam?" "What's happened to Tony?"
"Nothing. Tony's fine. He's just busy wrangling satellites."
"Am I supposed to know what you're talking about?"
"We found him."
Steve squeezes his eyes shut. This is good news, he reminds himself.
"He's hiding out in Westchester. Tony's got a satellite feed on him as we speak. He's staying put for now. Resting up. Thor really did a number on him. Think he may have smashed that metal arm, because he doesn't seem to be wearing it." "Steve?" Sam says.
"Yeah," Steve replies, coughing. "Yeah, sorry. That's great. We'll be there in about an hour."
"You gonna tell me what's going on?"
"My- my friends are being mowed down in my backyard, Sam. That's what's going on."
"Okay," Sam says, patiently. It's clear from his tone that he'll wait for answers, that he doesn't want to press.
Steve tells him everything.
[[They leave Betty at her dad's cabin to talk it out, uneasily, but she claims she knows what she's doing. Steve gets Sam to get Rhodey to fly out him there and arrest Ross because HELLO. And he and Nat fly back to NYC.]]
[[Tony goes off on Steve because Rhodey left and all he knew was Steve asked him to do something. Nat sets him straight, then tells Steve she's going back to the hospital. Without his arm, they really don't need the whole team to take Bucky down. Also she doesn't want to be part of bringing him to justice, so to speak.]]
The doors close behind them. Steve wastes a few seconds staring out the window, then he turns to address the group. "Look, this guy. This Winter Soldier. He used to go by another name."
"Oh, yeah?" Tony says. "I thought SHIELD's records post-date the whole having a name and a personality part of his life."
"Bucky Barnes."
Thor looks around at everyone. "It appears I am the only one failing to grasp the importance of this name."
"A long time ago, he was my best friend, Thor. We were close as brothers when we were kids, we fought together in the war. And I watched him fall off a mountain." ""
[[It all ends in a giant confrontation. They get the Winter Soldier cornered and they play a video of Ross cancelling the contract.]]
Steve rips off his cowl. "Dammit, Bucky. Enough. Stop this."
Nothing. It isn't like Coulson when they found him on that rock, the cultivated blankness not quite masking a desperate hope. Or even like Clint that day on the Helicarrier, that robotic, cloudy-eyed void, stripped of everything but direction.
This man who looks like Bucky, he knows exactly what he's doing and where he is. No one else is calling the shots right now.
But he doesn't know Steve.
When Natasha had warned him, he'd had no idea how hard this would be. As they drag the Winter Soldier away, wearing a faint version of the "You think you've got me on the ropes" smirk Steve has seen so many times before he can't begin to count them, he has one incredibly pointless thought.
What if I were small right now?
Would that have changed anything? Jogged something loose? Maybe somewhere in there, among the knowledge of how to walk and tie his shoes, is the Steve he knew for a hell of a lot longer than he knew Captain America.
"Steve Rogers," Thor says, still in that strangely formal way that Steve always found sort of comforting.
Steve turns, quickly realizing he has nothing to say even as he's opening his mouth to respond. When he first woke up, he would stand in one spot and vibrate, just like this. This must be what it's like for Bruce all the time, this all-encompassing powerlessness shifting into the need to-
The mailbox in front of him breaks loose from its moorings and smashes top-first into the street.
Steve flexes his hands.
Tony touches down right in front of him. "Cap. We've got a ride. It's time to go."
Tony points out Thor and the Hulk on the ground. Thor swings Mjoinir right into the Hulk's shoulder and then flies off.
"Oh, look," Tony says. "He's following."
[[The guys take him away and let him pound the shit out of them for a little bit, while Natasha stays behind with Clint.]]
Thor lands a blow with Mjoinir that sends Steve into the side of a rock-face. He bounces directly to the ground and lies there on his stomach, breathing hard into the grass.
"I will not ask if you yield," Thor rumbles from above. "But are you finished?"
Steve nods without raising his head. He thinks maybe now he won't kill the next person who looks at him funny. Possibly he'll even be able to sleep tonight.
He still can't think of anything to say to the guys, and doesn't care to. When they reach the tower, he goes straight to his room and passes out on top of the covers with most of his costume still on. As the world grows distant and dark, he has the vague notion that he should call Sam and see if Betty got home safe.
[[Thor's daughter wakes Steve up because he forgot to even close his door]]
"JARVIS, where's Natasha?" Steve asks.
"Agent Romanov has yet to return from the hospital," JARVIS says. "Ms. Potts and Mr. Stark are in the penthouse. And Dr. Banner is availing himself of the coffee machine in the common areas."
"I didn't ask about the rest of them," Steve says.
"There was a sixty-eight percent chance that you would," JARVIS says.
Steve has a brainstorm. Take Bruce with him when he goes to England. People sometimes move on because they have to, but the world doesn't stop turning. There's no better way to show him that than to show him.
"You know, it's weird," Bruce says. He's looking at his knees. "He picked a day when we were all home. And he chose to strike there, at the tower. Why would he do that? Would've made more sense to try and catch me alone. Away from all of you."
Steve narrows his eyes. "What are you getting at?"
"No concrete theories yet." "It's just... He increased his chance of failing, and decreased the risk of civilian casualties, significantly."
"Doubt he gets paid extra to cause a scene," Steve remarks.
"Of course," Bruce says. "You're absolutely right. I'm just thinking out loud, really." It's a lie. Like Steve, and almost everyone else, Bruce speaks when he has a point to make. Tony is the only one with a faulty brain to mouth filter. "Forget about it," he continues, like he genuinely wants Steve to buy that his words don't matter.
And that's what causes Steve to explode. "Why are you defending this guy?"
"Hey, I'm hardly a fan. It's just that I'm trained to take all relevant data into account."
"I've heard of the scientific method," Steve says, and he reminds himself that he's snapping at Bruce for no reason. Other than the fact that Bruce seems to be trying to give Steve hope, and Steve doesn't want it.
Not even Natasha thought he could be saved. And she'd know, wouldn't she?
How many times can he mourn the same person?
"Natasha just called," he says. "So Clint's awake and talking sense. So that's news."
"He say anything?"
"Forgot to ask, actually." Tony frowns. "Probably wanted to know if any bad guys got their asses kicked while he was out."
Natasha is sitting in a chair on the window side, her nose in a bodybuilding magazine.
"Nat," Clint says. She lowers her magazine to glare at him. "Eat something."
She goes, leaving the magazine at the foot of his bed. A shuffling movement from his lower half tips it onto the floor.
"Hates it when I get plugged," Clint says.
The rest of us aren't crazy about it either. Steve steals Natasha's seat. "Does this happen a lot?"
"Eh," Clint says. "Once or twice."
"Next on the agenda is talking to Tony about getting you better armor."
Clint pats Steve's hand clumsily. "Okay, Mom."
Natasha returns fifteen minutes later and unwraps a roast beef sandwich the size of her head.
"Had so many chances to kill you," Clint grumbles. She props her feet up on the edge of his bed as Bruce walks through the door.
"Well, well," Bruce says. "You do look worse than I do. I knew I'd find someone eventually."
Natasha unfolds a napkin and wipes a small circle of mustard from the corner of her mouth while Clint and Bruce bump fists, shooting victim solidarity or something. "Anyone ever tell you you're an asshole, Banner?"
"Surprisingly enough? I don't think so. That's not the one people tend to go for."
"We're gonna need more chairs," Natasha says.
Steve grips the side of his seat. "Think I should get going."
She passes over a grease-stained sack full of French fries. "Help me out with these," she says, then rises. "I'll ask an orderly."
Steve takes one fry, then another and another, like his hands are getting orders from somewhere other than his brain. They taste like cardboard, but the bag keeps getting lighter as he sits there.
"So Thor went back to Asgard, I think," Bruce says. "Well, no, I know he did. He left a message with JARVIS saying he shall be back soon and not to trouble ourselves with worry over his absence."
"I'm definitely not worried," Natasha says.
"Okay," Bruce says.
She shrugs. "He called me before he caught his ride."
"He did?" Steve says.
She nods and picks up her magazine.
"Hey, Natasha," Bruce says. "You have plans for the rest of that sandwich?"
"Have a party," she replies, handing it to Bruce.
"Thanks," he says. He puts it directly in Steve's hand. Steve drops the empty bag of fries to accept the sandwich and begins to eat, even though he isn't hungry. He isn't tired. Maybe if he talks to Sam, verifies that his friend is okay and everything went as expected, he'll feel something.
"And Stark?" Clint asks. His blinks are twice as long as they should be.
"Tied up in a meeting with some sultan. Or sheik. Some guy with a title and an unreal amount of money."
"I'm not looking forward to cleaning up the mess after Tony tries convincing the Middle East the world doesn't need oil anymore," Steve says. He's surprised by how normal he sounds, considering he bled out yesterday. It's only the serum keeping him upright, putting on clothes, getting out of bed.
Thor takes a breath. "There is a chance. The tesseract..."
"What about it?" Tony asks.
"It has certain properties."
"You think it can restore his memories?"
"I believe it is possible," he hedges.
Natasha slides her hand inside Steve's elbow. "I want to try."
Clint coughs. "All those bodies..."
Bruce touches Clint's shoulder. "He could very well fold under the weight of all that guilt, guys."
She lifts her chin. "If I can find a way to deal with it, so can he."
"Tash-"
"Hawk." Tony glares at him. "Usually it's like a personal victory getting you to utter two sentences in a row. Rip a hole in your lung and suddenly there's no shutting you up." Clint flips him off, then takes in a long, painful-sounding breath and closes his eyes.
"He deserves a chance," Natasha says, directly to Steve.
~
Steve sits at a metal table soldered to the ground. He could bust it up, if he wanted, easily. So could the man sitting on the other side, probably. They hadn't found much in the way of medical records for this guy.
He opens the silver case, exposing the device that, once upon a time, destroyed his entire life.
Steve looked up at the building. His eyes were still red and kind of puffy, he knew. There was no helping that. "I wasn't scared," he said, wiping his hands off on his jacket. They were dirty from the handful of soil he'd tossed on his mother's coffin. "Heck with you, Barnes, for even thinking it."
Bucky raised his hands. "Hey, I believe you."
"They're a buncha nuns. Old ladies in funny outfits. Who's scared of that?"
"I heard my Grandpa Jimmy, he always ran when he saw 'em coming."
They shared a quick, tiny smile before Steve let out a sigh. "How'd you get them to say yes?"
"You'll have to bunk with me. And we'll have to sell newspapers or make double time with the scrap metal, earn our keep somehow."
"I'd be okay in the orphanage, y'know."
"'Course you would." Bucky threw an arm around Steve's neck, his sharp knuckle digging into the part in Steve's hair before he let go. "But now we don't got to find out. That's better, right?"
Steve fills his lungs with recycled air. "Remember who you are," he says.
Then he takes Bucky's flesh and blood hand and places it on the cube.
let's start with the end, part two (part one is here), mostly written in 2012.
this was my attempt at doing an epic plotty thing that resolved all the dangling participles left from avengers. because i am allergic to anything requiring, like, organized thought, i ended up chopping it in half, making it just a story about steve gradually developing relationships with each of the group. this appeared to have been very confusing for readers. it got like 5x as many hits as the preceding fic in the series and less than half the kudos. anyway i'm just proud of my stucky flashback scene, which i swear to GOD i wrote in 2013.
-
In the car, just the two of them, it becomes painfully obvious that they don't know each other as well as two people who share the same space probably should. A few awkward attempts at small talk have Pepper's cheeks flushing with chagrin.
"I'm sorry," she says. "The only people I ever deal with are colleagues, underlings, or Tony. I'm a little out of practice."
To him that sounds both lonely and exhausting, but she doesn't seem unhappy. Just a little tired. Definitely in need of a break. "Don't feel like you have to keep me entertained," Steve says gently. "I don't actually mind the quiet."
Her smile is incandescent. As he ducks his head, she reaches out and squeezes his hand. "You're a keeper, Steve Rogers."
After that Pepper spends most of the ride uptown flipping through a fashion magazine the size of a coffee table book. Her spine starts out almost painfully straight. By increments, she relaxes, until she's melted against the seat.
Steve does a rough sketch of her on his phone's drawing app. It'll be on paper tonight.
~
The zoo staff actually let some of the peacocks roam free, a fact that becomes evident when Steve and Pepper take a breather between the Bug Carousel and the Dancing Crane Café. A handful of grammar school kids in matching fluorescent green t-shirts crowd around one of the birds, chattering on top of each other and snapping pictures with colorful plastic cameras.
Pepper smiles at the group as she sips from a bottle of water. There's a wistfulness to it, almost a sadness, and Steve wonders if this is the life she had planned for herself--she strikes him as someone who knew what she wanted very early on--or if there might have been more to the picture that ended up falling by the wayside. Steve had never been much for planning in the long-term. Finish art school. Maybe get a job as a cartoonist or an illustrator. But he got sick a few too many times, doctor's bills took away his tuition money, and he had to drop out. Then came the war, and, well. Here he is. Even if he'd had plans, they would have been reduced to smithereens.
Pepper's phone goes off. Hers uses a standard ring, rather than a song from the radio or some kind of sound effect. Her mouth turns down when she looks at the screen. "There was supposed to be a no-phone rule for today, but I'd really like to take this," she says apologetically, then smiles in response to Steve's shrug. "Could you go in and grab me a salad? They should have something green in there."
To give her a little more time, he stops in the gift shop first, lingering over an impressive array of stuffed animals. At the sound of the school kids approaching outside, he hands a few bills to the woman at the register and asks her to let them pick out whatever they want.
"No, it's- I know it feels like a double standard, but it really isn't. Yes, we live together. Technically. Ask me how many times he's left the building with me, just the two of us. I'm one of his oldest friends and I'm blessed with a boyfriend in a flying suit of armor. But he won't do it. I'm sorry, Betty. You know better than anyone how stubborn he can be, I can't exactly-" She looks up, spies him there, and holds up one finger. "Look, I'm scheduled to be in DC the twenty third and the twenty fourth. I'd love it if you could come meet me for dinner or drinks. Let me know, okay?"
[[And then Pepper takes Steve to buy a car.]]
[[Avengers mission 2.0. Thor returns to tell them he sourced the Chitauri back to this The Other dude, and also "I have found something I did not expect. Agent Coulson." Everybody goes okay what.]]
"Director?" Steve prods.
Fury presses his lips together. "Agent Coulson's body disappeared from the morgue around the same time the scepter vanished from the evidence locker. Prevailing theory is the scepter left some trace of itself behind when Loki stabbed him, so when whoever was controlling the Chitauri pulled it out of our world, they got him, too."
Clint makes a guttural sound in his throat.
"You have something to say, Agent Barton?"
"Just hoping you understand how lucky you are that you're on a screen right now," Clint says. Natasha wraps her fingers around his wrist. "Sir."
"I'm going to forget you said that. Listen, you all need to stop looking at me like I'm the only who can't see my devil horns. We had people looking into it, people who weren't nearly as close to the situation. And you know what? If he'd turned out to be a zombie, you would have thanked me for sparing you having to cut his head off."
Thor coughs a little, and Steve turns to him to quietly say, "Flesh-eating animated corpses." As Thor's eyes widen, he follows it up with, "Completely fictional, as far as I know. I'll show you some footage later." Thor might enjoy George Romero movies. Clint and Natasha certainly do.
"We wouldn't have thanked you," Natasha says.
[[SPACE TRAVEL. ON THE BIFROST. They find the place where Coulson was supposedly being held, and they bust it up.]]
"Agent Coulson is not on this ship," Thor says, and falls silent, like that's all there is to say.
Natasha starts looking from Thor to the airlock and back again, like she's seriously considering something. Before she can act on anything, Steve asks, "Where is he then?"
Another round of chittering from the more-alien alien and Thor turns to them. "I am told that he absconded with one of their transport vehicles."
"And went where with it?" Clint asks.
"He had to know he couldn't get back to Earth in that," Tony says.
"Not Earth," Thor says, "but there is a small planetoid with tiny animals and vegetation. And caves."
[[Tracking Coulson to a cave on this tiny Little Prince type of planet. The aliens follow close behind.]]
He is dressed kind of like Bruce after a Hulk-out, in the tattered, blood-stained remains of the suit he was wearing when Loki ran him through all those months ago. There is a rock in his right hand roughly the size of a baseball. He tosses it a few inches into the air and lets it fall back to his palm, over and over.
In the distance, Steve can hear the Hulk roaring as he does something awful to someone who probably deserves it. It's accompanied by a crack of thunder.
"Agent Coulson?" Steve says. Coulson's expression doesn't change. Steve doesn't know what the man thinks he's looking at, a mirage, shape-shifters, or what. But this is not joy at being rescued, that's for sure.
"You can go on ahead, Steve," Natasha says. Her gaze is on Coulson, and it doesn't waver.
"Yeah, we got this," Clint says.
"You're sure?" Steve asks.
"Go make sure the Hulk doesn't wreck anything we don't want wrecked, Cap. We'll see you in a few."
Steve turns around as he's walking away. Natasha is pulling off her gloves and dropping them on the ground. The guns soon follow. Her hands stay up and non-threatening the whole time. Clint is doing the same with his quiver and bow.
"Either of you get your heads bashed in," Steve says under his breath, knowing they'll hear it over the radio, "I am leaving you here to serve as an example to the others."
"I like that plan," Tony chimes in. "And I will fully enable it. I'll make up embarrassing stories for how you died, too."
[[After all is said and done, Thor goes to New Mexico, but he comes back a lot because it's boringer in the sticks & he's got nothing to do. And Coulson takes a long leave of absence, on a tropical island or something. He's earned it. He, also, comes back fairly quickly. I think. I haven't decided yet.]]
"Kennedy." Clyde Rembert grimaces as he slides two cards facedown to the center of the table. "Razzle-dazzle and not much else. Tell me he's not your favorite."
"LBJ wasn't any better," Steve points out. "I don't understand why we even went to Vietnam. His mishandling of that situation got a lot of Americans killed. "
Sam deals two cards to Rembert. "His domestic policy was the most progressive since FDR. And he passed the civil rights legislation Kennedy had been dragging his feet about."
"I like Truman," Steve says.
Sam smiles like he isn't surprised at all.
"Help me," he says.
Steve kneels down beside them. He presses two fingers against the underside of Rembert's jaw, not that he needs to. The man took three shots, all in vital places.
Sam falls back on his haunches. "I know," he says. His face goes tight, scrunched up with distress. "Goddammit."
"The only way to help him now is to find his killer."
Sam nods vaguely.
"Sam, I need you to concentrate. Find the guy running away from us right now."
[[They lose him after a foot chase. James salutes crisply before he takes off and it jogs something loose. Not in an "omg BUCKY" way, more in an itchy, "there's something off about this dude" way. Steve starts looking into things.]]
Steve stands at the doorway of Tony's gym, viewing the inhabitants of the boxing ring with probably more trepidation than he'd like to be showing.
"How exactly did this come about?" he mutters to Clint.
"Hill may have mentioned something about how Bruce is not always gonna be green when things get hairy," Clint answers. "And then Tony..."
"Tony," Steve says, nodding. That's pretty much what he expected. "And the reason why he has to be the one in the ring with him?"
"He ran through all the rest of us one by one and explained why we wouldn't work. Size, fitness level, being an opponent the Hulk might decide he wants for himself..."
"Can't believe Bruce said yes to this." The Hulk could snap Tony's neck with a back-handed smack, and Tony doesn't have Natasha's reflexes, Clint's years of training, or any kind of enhanced metabolism.
Clint doesn't disagree. "It seemed like a lesser of two evils situation," he admits.
Tony and Bruce circle around each other, and Steve decides to back off a little. It wouldn't help Bruce's anxiety level to see him hovering just outside the ropes, waiting for something to go wrong. They usually get a warning period of about ten to twenty seconds before the Hulk comes out. Steve can take a seat and trust that he'll be there in time to prevent any accidents.
Abandoning her free weights, Natasha sits down beside him. "Heard you had a run-in with an assassin in a black mask," she says. "Did you get a look at his hands?"
"Yeah." Steve narrows his eyes at her. "One of them looked strange, metal." The sound of flesh impacting on flesh draws his attention back to the ring.
Tony is staring at Bruce with an appalled expression. "That's what you're leading with, a slap. Really. No, it's cool. Just let me take a few minutes off to the side to craft a couple of dueling pistols. 'Cause that's what you were going for, right? I don't know whose honor I besmirched lately, but I'm sure I deserved to get called out like this."
Clint seems almost impressed. "How are you still talking that much with the mouth-guard in?"
"Talent!" Tony bounces around his side of the ring. "Come on, Mr. Green-Jeans-"
Bruce removes his mouth-guard, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "I was wondering when you'd bust that one out."
"-hit me with another princess-y slap, Physics. Go ahead."
Natasha rolls her eyes at Steve and resumes their conversation. "He's called the Winter Soldier. At least, he was when I knew him. Not sure where he was from, Canada or the States, judging by what I could see and hear. But they were very skilled at manipulating that sort of thing to suit their needs. He could've been anything, Scandinavian, English, Australian..."
"Doesn't give me much to go on."
"I'm sorry." She shrugs. "They treated the man like a hard-drive, formatting and transferring in new intel as needed. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost all memories of me." Her tone is very matter-of-fact. This is something she came to terms with long ago. "So there's not much I can tell you about how he is now. I only know that he was kind to me, for as long as they allowed him to be."
"They ever send him after you?"
"No, he just, he disappeared." She brushes hair out of her face. "Which was standard. They placed him in cold stasis after every mission. After Clint recruited me, I tried to find where they were keeping him, but it proved more difficult than I anticipated."
Steve leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Might've been easier if you hadn't tried to do it on your own."
She shakes her head, though more to herself than Steve. "Clint stuck his neck out for me, and they chose not to punish him for it. Much." Her expression is hard, and Steve looks over to where Clint is instructing Bruce on head-locks. "I couldn't ask him to place himself in that position again. Especially not for someone I didn't think we'd be able to turn."
Steve doesn't bother asking why she would still go after this man whose name she didn't even know, who she didn't think would ever fight for the good guys. The only thing that mattered was getting her friend out of there. "So what makes him different from you?"
"Time is a big one," she says. "They had him for at least twenty years before I was even born, Steve. His programming goes down to the bone." She gets up and approaches the ring. "Hey, Tony, you know you drop the corresponding shoulder before you punch. Stop telegraphing your moves."
"Telegraph this, sweetheart," he says, flicking the underside of his chin with the back of his hand. Taking advantage of the distraction, Bruce hooks his arm around Tony's neck and brings him down.
Clint applauds. "Good start, Doc."
Thor and Pepper emerge from the elevator, and Thor lets out a cheerful "I get winner!" An expression of horror flashing across her face, Pepper speaks quietly into his ear. "I get whoever is amenable to sparring with me," he amends, looking to her for approval. He puffs up slightly when she smiles and nods.
~
[[Thor & Tony doing a gig for Coast Guard/Port Authority. Something goes wrong and Tony is ranting about Fing government and what BS, seriously. And Steve takes the other side, like "They've been at this a lot longer than you. Put on your big boy pants and admit you were wrong."]]
[Natasha & Clint track down info. The Winter Soldier was just hired again, this time by an American, a highly ranked dude in the military. No one knows who. Their informant was like, "Uh, all you fat, privileged Americans look the same to me. Sarz."]]
[[Except Tony was in the right, oops. There's video footage from another angle that comes out proves he wasn't to blame. Steve apologizes fumblingly. And Tony just looks at him like, what are you even talking about right now. And Tony announces the three of them are going to lunch.]]
"Didn't realize you were actually worried about that," she says. "I could have told you he wasn't holding on to a grudge."
"Oh, really?"
"Take a look at the people Tony keeps close, Steve. Notice any common threads? They're all well-practiced in telling him he's full of it. Even Happy."
"We're going to grab a bite. Greenback and I haven't seen the sun in roughly thirty-six hours. Pepper'll be pissed if she gets back from Canberra all tan and her men are vampires. The Anne Rice kind, not the bedazzled kind. Though the idea of being able to blind someone with my naked ass does hold a certain appeal."
Steve chokes out a laugh, which he knows was Tony's intention.
"I know you're in, Rogers. You know how impolite it is to turn down food. How about you, lady?"
Natasha shakes her head. "Thor got in this morning. Clint made me promise the next time he and Thor occupied the same space, we're teaching him Charades."
"Charades," Tony repeats.
She shrugs. "Helped pass the time during ops. Especially when we were separated but still in each other's sight-lines."
"So your little fit of war games nostalgia can't wait two hours?"
"Clint's moving out again. His flight leaves at five," she says, smiling without teeth. "Not that it's any of your business."
Steve catches a quick glint of red light reflecting off of the Stark Industries button on Bruce's lapel and suddenly his thoughts coalesce into one name.
General Ross.
Steve pushes Bruce toward the ground with a flat hand to the other man's spine, and the shot that would have gone straight through Bruce's heart ends up slightly higher.
"Inside now," Steve shouts. Together he and Tony haul Bruce back into the lobby and behind the empty receptionist desk.
"Bruce?" Tony says, kneeling down. "Bruce, goddammit. Wake up."
Steve leaves them there, walking away a few steps to calls Clint.
"What the hell just happened?" Clint says. "Traffic stopped dead right in front of our building. I count six simultaneous fender-benders."
Bruce's eyes flutter open and he lets out a moan.
"Bruce took a hit from a sniper rifle," Steve says.
"Why don't I see the Hulk?" Clint asks.
"He's not out yet," Steve says, plowing right through Clint's swearing. "The bullet came from South-Southeast, I think. You and Natasha need to track the trajectory using JARVIS's security footage, all right? Get Thor to take you wherever this came from and find this guy."
As Steve stows the phone, Tony is squawking. "Transform outside? We're not taking you outside with a sniper out there, dumbass. Anger to the surface, now. Go on." Tony shakes his head in response to something Steve can't make out. "I could give two shits about my pretty building, Bruce. The people in it will be fine. We'll make sure the other guy doesn't get too unfriendly with the load-bearing walls. Okay? Don't worry about us."
JARVIS butts in to ask for clarification about the security footage. It takes a few moments for the AI to be satisfied. Then JARVIS informs him that Thor has taken off with Natasha and Clint. Steve looks over just in time to see Tony raise one fist over Bruce's chest. "Tony!" Steve shouts. "Wait."
Bruce lets out a cry of pain that instantly turns deeper, darker, and the Hulk gives Tony a light shove that launches him six feet into the air.
Moving his head from side to side to get out the kinks in his neck, Tony takes out a handkerchief and wipes Bruce's blood off his hands. "Let's never do that again. Okay? New team rule."
Steve eyes the Hulk warily. Bruce didn't quite want him out, so Steve isn't sure what to expect. But after the big guy turns around, he simply stops.
"Hulk," Steve says, unease growing in the pit of his stomach as the Hulk blinks at him slowly. "You should really-"
The Hulk falls and goes still, like a puppet with its strings cut, like the Chitauri that day.
"What the fucking hell." Tony scrambles to the Hulk's side and puts his hand over the giant nose, letting out a loud exhale. "Jesus. Sleeping."
"They knocked him out?"
"Had to be a sedative on that bullet," Tony says, running his fingertips over the bullet hole that used to be there. "One way ticket to the bloodstream. Clearly it was triggered by the transformation, otherwise Bruce never would have woken up."
"Failsafe," Steve says.
"Yeah, exactly. To keep the Hulk from pursuing if he didn't get him in one shot. Or, alternately, to stay chill and compliant in one spot and await transport. Smart guy." Tony lifts his head. "How do you think Bruce would react if I told him he's not allowed to de-Hulk until we bag this son of a bitch?"
Steve offers Tony a hand up. "Thank God it wasn't poison," he says, looking down. There are mottled copper stains down the left side of the Hulk's chest.
"Wouldn't work. His system overpowers and metabolizes anything that might try to attack it. A sedative, though. It's shiftier. The body's supposed to sleep anyway, right? It gets the job done by sneaking in under the radar." One of Tony's hands curls into a fist and uncurls. "We need to find the lab that made this and raze it to the ground before they figure out how to sneak anything else in."
"Also the shooter," Steve says.
"Haven't forgotten about him," Tony says in a low growl.
Steve's phone rings again.
"Two pieces of intel," Natasha says. "One, we have visual confirmation. It was the Winter Soldier. Thor is still in pursuit."
"Those sirens sound really close, Widow," Steve remarks. He hears another, fainter, sound, a wheezing, like an old radiator.
"We were two blocks from Bellevue. This is against protocol, but- but I'm not waiting. Fucking... no."
"Natasha?" Steve glances at Tony. "What was the second piece of intel?"
"And two," Natasha says, sounding strained. "He's using armor-piercing bullets." The sirens are getting louder. They nearly drown out what she says next. "Went through Hawkeye's Kevlar like it was tissue paper."
The next thing Steve does is call Sam and tell him to stay the hell out of Midtown until further notice.
~
"Are we agreed that this is Ross pulling the strings?" Steve says.
"Oh, he's the prime suspect, definitely," Tony says. He looks grateful to have something to concentrate on. Ordinarily they'd leave one member behind and the rest would be out there looking for the shooter. But today Steve knew with almost 100 percent certainty they would lose someone else if they didn't stop and regroup. Right now they're about as safe as they can be, in this windowless hospital waiting room with SHIELD guarding the area, but they've had nothing to distract them from their thoughts.
Bruce is slumped in one of the seats, pale and shivering from the combined effects of shock and the sedative hangover. "So it's my turn for my problems to put everyone in danger," he says, taking careful sips from a small glass of water. "Could've sworn it said Natasha on the schedule."
"Well, the Winter Soldier is sort of my ex," Natasha says, touching his arm. "Sorry."
"That's okay." He pats her hand. "I'm sure you wouldn't have let things go that far if you knew he'd be shooting several of your friends at some indeterminate point in the future."
"I didn't have friends back then," she says, in that off-handedly blunt way she has of dropping devastating details about her life. So much of the time she's like an anvil covered in velvet. "Or family. Just him."
And later, there was just Clint. No one says it, but they're all thinking it.
Without warning, Bruce slides out of his seat to the floor. "Okay," he says, when everyone has a problem with this. "I'm okay. Just dizzy. The floor, it moves less." He lists to one side until he's leaning against the wall.
Steve and Tony share a look.
"I'd like to think I'm warmer than the floor." Natasha smoothly settles next to Bruce and slowly guides him away from the wall and closer to her. Within a minute or two, he's sprawled across her lower half.
"Thor doesn't do stealth missions," Bruce says quietly. "He probably lost the Soldier hours ago and can't find his way back."
"He would have called," Steve reminds him, keeping his voice low.
Bruce swallows. "Not if he's-"
"Bruce." Natasha covers his forehead with her hand. "Close your eyes. You'll feel better when you wake up."
"Never do," Bruce replies. Tony walks out the door.
Steve finds him in the hallway, breathing hard, his eyes wet.
"Hey," Steve says. "He feels like hell, and the guy who almost assassinated him just blew away one of his friends." He can't say he knows for sure what's going on in Bruce's head, but now is not a good time to be judging his general state of mind. "Give him a break."
Tony nods, bonelessly, wordlessly.
"Okay?" Steve says.
Tony pushes at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "God, this day. Safe to assume they haven't stashed a bar or microbrewery anywhere in this building, huh?"
Steve gives Tony's shoulder a squeeze. They all want to believe Bruce is all right when he isn't being shot, knocked out, and hunted like an animal.
~
Forty-five minutes later, Bruce stirs, swallowing heavily, and he runs for the restroom. When he gets back, he seems a bit more awake, more present. He'd likely improve even more if he hulked out, but no one's letting the guy outdoors any time soon.
AD Hill's call gives them something to do other than watch Bruce avoid everyone's eyes. Steve puts her on speaker phone.
"I've got a lead on Thor," she says. "There's a report from the third precinct."
"Third?" Steve says. That feels important for some reason.
Tony frowns. "Isn't that where the, uh, captain-"
"Thinks all we're good for is destroying the city and causing collateral damage," Natasha finishes. "Yeah, that's the third."
"Well, they've been holding him for the last two hours," Hill says, and ends the call.
"I'll get the car and swing by the precinct." Steve looks around the room. "Um..." Even with SHIELD there, he doesn't feel right leaving.
The door opens, making everyone jump.
"Rhodey?" Tony says, brightening up and pulling his friend into a hard embrace. "Well, fuck me. Good news for a change."
"Good news is my middle name," Rhodey says amiably, pounding Tony on the back and letting go. He raises an eyebrow at Bruce. "You look like shit, Harvard."
Bruce's laughter is thin and weak, but there doesn't seem to be any bitterness to it. "In my defense, I just had two things done to me that probably would have killed anyone else in this room."
"Excuses, excuses." Rhodey rolls his eyes.
"Right?" Tony says cheerfully.
A shadow passes over the door. Steve leaves the room with a nod to Natasha. Coulson is standing there with shades on, his lips pressed together.
"Agent Coulson," Steve says in greeting.
He hands Steve a phone. "New tech," he says. "Won't screw with the hospital equipment."
Steve takes the phone. "Hello?"
"Hey, Steve."
"Sam? What have they got you doing?"
"I'm your eye in the sky, Cap. Seventeenth floor, anyway. That's as high up as I could go. Gives me a better radius. I'd have you come up and keep me company, but I'm trying to concentrate."
Steve pulls at the neck of his t-shirt. "I thought I told you to stay out of this."
"Rogers. You know if it'd been my brother or my nephew, you would've been right here," he says. "Go bail out your Viking."
"It's okay, Captain," Coulson says, reclaiming his phone. "We'll keep the area secure."
~
Steve glances at his passenger and starts the car.
Now they've got Thor back. This should make Bruce a little less defeatist, anyway.
Though he's less Thor than usual, even taking Clint into account. And his story doesn't add up.
"Why didn't you fly off again?" Steve asks.
"There were innocents present and the police had their weapons drawn," Thor says. "I did not wish to escalate the situation." His face and arms are smeared with dried blood from wounds already healed over, and maybe some he inflicted on the bad guy.
Steve grips the wheel and nods, waiting for the rest of it.
"I have failed in my task," Thor says finally.
There it is. "Because he got away, you mean?" Steve asks, and Thor just looks out the window. "He got away from me a few months ago. If he hadn't, Clint wouldn't be where he is right now." Even as he says it, he has the hypocritical thought that Sam better not blame himself for any of this.
Thor doesn't say anything for about ten blocks, and then, "Do you believe he will live?"
"I'm not a doctor, buddy," Steve says. They haven't even heard what the doctors think. "But I wouldn't count him out just yet."
[[After they get word that the doctors still don't know for sure, Steve and Natasha go back to the Tower to grab clothes for everyone. While they're there, Steve asks JARVIS to go through all the SHIELD info on the Winter Soldier and it's really painfully obvious that no one has a photo. Natasha helps Steve do a police sketch of the Winter Soldier]]
"His jaw should be more square. Also he has a cleft in his chin," she says, placing a finger down the middle of her own chin to demonstrate.
That's when he starts getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The roiling only gets worse as they go on. By the time the sketch is completed, he can barely breathe.
"Hey," she says, her eyes concerned.
He can't answer her directly. Putting this into words is far, far beyond him. "JARVIS? Can you show us a photograph of the Howling Commandos? As high-definition as you can find."
"Would I be correct in assuming you would like to see the image of one in particular?"
"Yes," Steve chokes out.
JARVIS complies, lighting up the television with a large photo Steve doesn't remember taking. He and Bucky are in their dress uniforms. Steve looks like he's trying to be serious. Bucky's grin is wide and shameless; he never cared much about decorum. Natasha covers her mouth with her hand.
"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th Infantry," JARVIS supplies helpfully. "Officially killed in action during a mission with the Howling Commandos in Austria, 1945."
"You said they had him for a long time," Steve reminds her, feeling light-headed.
"Steve, I had no idea," she says, her voice thick. "None. I hope you can believe me."
Steve can only stare at her. "What? Of course."
She smiles to herself. It isn't a pretty smile, and the quiet laugh is even uglier. "God, you really have no clue what I'm capable of, who I used to be. Do you?"
"I know who you are." He thinks about the look on her face as Bruce fell asleep on her, the way she sounded as she dragged Clint to the hospital. "What matters more than that?"
Then it hits him so hard the world loses focus, and it's really good that his arms are around her because she's holding him up when his knees go. Bucky's alive, and he's a remorseless killer.
"Steve?" she says, letting him go.
"Cancel the contract," he blurts out. "That's what we need to concentrate on. Bruce- Bruce is still in danger. There must be some way, some code or something. Clients must have wanted to back out in the past."
"Contracts can be nullified," she allows. "By his handlers. It can be done by the client directly, as well, though I've never seen it happen."
"So we need Ross." Steve runs his hands through his hair. "How the hell do we get Ross?"
~
Betty Ross is even more beautiful than her photograph.
But then, they say women are supposed to be prettier when they're pregnant. The glow and what have you.
"Thank you for meeting with us, Dr. Ross," Steve says, handing her a mug of tea.
She wraps her fingers around the handle, giving him a shade of what is probably a traffic-stopping smile. "When Captain America asks you to do something, you do it," she says. Her smile fades. "Listen, I know that you're friends with Bruce, is he...?"
Steve is quick to reassure her. "He's all right," he says, and she lets out a relieved breath.
"It's just that your father seems to wish otherwise," Natasha says.
"Oh, God. What has he done now?"
After they tell her, Betty's immediate reaction is, "What do you need me to do? Does it involve killing my father myself? Because I think I'm at that point."
"You can't kill the general," Natasha says, an amused glint in her eye. She likes this woman. "We need him to call off the contract on Bruce's life. Do you know where he is?"
"Oh, yes," she says. "And I'm going with you."
[[Steve & Natasha bring Betty on Tony's jet to find Ross's cabin on Lake Michigan.]]
Steve's head dips forward against his will, and he straightens immediately, panicked.
"When was the last time you slept, Rogers?"
Betty makes a surprised noise, almost like a hiccup.
"It kicked, didn't it?" Natasha asks.
"Yeah." She ducks her head, flushing. "Listen, I know you think I'm a horrible person."
"Why? For moving on? Just because he hasn't doesn't mean you can't."
"You have to understand. I love Bruce more than I've ever loved anyone."
"More than the father of your baby?" Natasha asks. Steve winces.
"Timothy and I were friends. I was sad, and scared, and so tired of my calls being ignored I stopped trying. And then..." She gestures at her stomach. "He asked me to marry him. I haven't said yes. Haven't said no, either." Betty crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself. "Bruce doesn't have enough faith in himself to be with me on my own. Imagine how he'd react to a baby."
"Is that what you want?" Natasha asks. "To give up on him?"
"What I want is to turn back the clock and stop his accident from ever happening."
"But that's not possible. That kind of thinking isn't constructive."
"Fine," Betty says. "I want Bruce, giant green warts and all. But it's not just about what I want anymore."
"No, it really isn't," Natasha says. "Sounds like you've made your decision."
Betty bites her lip.
Natasha puts her hand over Betty's, not saying a word, while the other woman cries.
"You know, it'll be okay," he says.
"Captain?"
"Bruce has people looking out for him. You need to take care of yourself and your baby."
[[They find Ross, and Betty tells Steve & Natasha to wait outside while she talks to her dad.]]
"We're not telling Bruce any of this," she says.
"He'll find out at some point, if he's still keeping tabs on her, which he probably is. The birth announcement or the engagement will pop up on Google. Wouldn't it be better to hear it from us?"
"Okay, but not now. Two weeks from when this is over."
"Why two weeks?"
"Why not?"
"Any news?" Steve asks.
"Hey, Steve."
"Sam?" "What's happened to Tony?"
"Nothing. Tony's fine. He's just busy wrangling satellites."
"Am I supposed to know what you're talking about?"
"We found him."
Steve squeezes his eyes shut. This is good news, he reminds himself.
"He's hiding out in Westchester. Tony's got a satellite feed on him as we speak. He's staying put for now. Resting up. Thor really did a number on him. Think he may have smashed that metal arm, because he doesn't seem to be wearing it." "Steve?" Sam says.
"Yeah," Steve replies, coughing. "Yeah, sorry. That's great. We'll be there in about an hour."
"You gonna tell me what's going on?"
"My- my friends are being mowed down in my backyard, Sam. That's what's going on."
"Okay," Sam says, patiently. It's clear from his tone that he'll wait for answers, that he doesn't want to press.
Steve tells him everything.
[[They leave Betty at her dad's cabin to talk it out, uneasily, but she claims she knows what she's doing. Steve gets Sam to get Rhodey to fly out him there and arrest Ross because HELLO. And he and Nat fly back to NYC.]]
[[Tony goes off on Steve because Rhodey left and all he knew was Steve asked him to do something. Nat sets him straight, then tells Steve she's going back to the hospital. Without his arm, they really don't need the whole team to take Bucky down. Also she doesn't want to be part of bringing him to justice, so to speak.]]
The doors close behind them. Steve wastes a few seconds staring out the window, then he turns to address the group. "Look, this guy. This Winter Soldier. He used to go by another name."
"Oh, yeah?" Tony says. "I thought SHIELD's records post-date the whole having a name and a personality part of his life."
"Bucky Barnes."
Thor looks around at everyone. "It appears I am the only one failing to grasp the importance of this name."
"A long time ago, he was my best friend, Thor. We were close as brothers when we were kids, we fought together in the war. And I watched him fall off a mountain." ""
[[It all ends in a giant confrontation. They get the Winter Soldier cornered and they play a video of Ross cancelling the contract.]]
Steve rips off his cowl. "Dammit, Bucky. Enough. Stop this."
Nothing. It isn't like Coulson when they found him on that rock, the cultivated blankness not quite masking a desperate hope. Or even like Clint that day on the Helicarrier, that robotic, cloudy-eyed void, stripped of everything but direction.
This man who looks like Bucky, he knows exactly what he's doing and where he is. No one else is calling the shots right now.
But he doesn't know Steve.
When Natasha had warned him, he'd had no idea how hard this would be. As they drag the Winter Soldier away, wearing a faint version of the "You think you've got me on the ropes" smirk Steve has seen so many times before he can't begin to count them, he has one incredibly pointless thought.
What if I were small right now?
Would that have changed anything? Jogged something loose? Maybe somewhere in there, among the knowledge of how to walk and tie his shoes, is the Steve he knew for a hell of a lot longer than he knew Captain America.
"Steve Rogers," Thor says, still in that strangely formal way that Steve always found sort of comforting.
Steve turns, quickly realizing he has nothing to say even as he's opening his mouth to respond. When he first woke up, he would stand in one spot and vibrate, just like this. This must be what it's like for Bruce all the time, this all-encompassing powerlessness shifting into the need to-
The mailbox in front of him breaks loose from its moorings and smashes top-first into the street.
Steve flexes his hands.
Tony touches down right in front of him. "Cap. We've got a ride. It's time to go."
Tony points out Thor and the Hulk on the ground. Thor swings Mjoinir right into the Hulk's shoulder and then flies off.
"Oh, look," Tony says. "He's following."
[[The guys take him away and let him pound the shit out of them for a little bit, while Natasha stays behind with Clint.]]
Thor lands a blow with Mjoinir that sends Steve into the side of a rock-face. He bounces directly to the ground and lies there on his stomach, breathing hard into the grass.
"I will not ask if you yield," Thor rumbles from above. "But are you finished?"
Steve nods without raising his head. He thinks maybe now he won't kill the next person who looks at him funny. Possibly he'll even be able to sleep tonight.
He still can't think of anything to say to the guys, and doesn't care to. When they reach the tower, he goes straight to his room and passes out on top of the covers with most of his costume still on. As the world grows distant and dark, he has the vague notion that he should call Sam and see if Betty got home safe.
[[Thor's daughter wakes Steve up because he forgot to even close his door]]
"JARVIS, where's Natasha?" Steve asks.
"Agent Romanov has yet to return from the hospital," JARVIS says. "Ms. Potts and Mr. Stark are in the penthouse. And Dr. Banner is availing himself of the coffee machine in the common areas."
"I didn't ask about the rest of them," Steve says.
"There was a sixty-eight percent chance that you would," JARVIS says.
Steve has a brainstorm. Take Bruce with him when he goes to England. People sometimes move on because they have to, but the world doesn't stop turning. There's no better way to show him that than to show him.
"You know, it's weird," Bruce says. He's looking at his knees. "He picked a day when we were all home. And he chose to strike there, at the tower. Why would he do that? Would've made more sense to try and catch me alone. Away from all of you."
Steve narrows his eyes. "What are you getting at?"
"No concrete theories yet." "It's just... He increased his chance of failing, and decreased the risk of civilian casualties, significantly."
"Doubt he gets paid extra to cause a scene," Steve remarks.
"Of course," Bruce says. "You're absolutely right. I'm just thinking out loud, really." It's a lie. Like Steve, and almost everyone else, Bruce speaks when he has a point to make. Tony is the only one with a faulty brain to mouth filter. "Forget about it," he continues, like he genuinely wants Steve to buy that his words don't matter.
And that's what causes Steve to explode. "Why are you defending this guy?"
"Hey, I'm hardly a fan. It's just that I'm trained to take all relevant data into account."
"I've heard of the scientific method," Steve says, and he reminds himself that he's snapping at Bruce for no reason. Other than the fact that Bruce seems to be trying to give Steve hope, and Steve doesn't want it.
Not even Natasha thought he could be saved. And she'd know, wouldn't she?
How many times can he mourn the same person?
"Natasha just called," he says. "So Clint's awake and talking sense. So that's news."
"He say anything?"
"Forgot to ask, actually." Tony frowns. "Probably wanted to know if any bad guys got their asses kicked while he was out."
Natasha is sitting in a chair on the window side, her nose in a bodybuilding magazine.
"Nat," Clint says. She lowers her magazine to glare at him. "Eat something."
She goes, leaving the magazine at the foot of his bed. A shuffling movement from his lower half tips it onto the floor.
"Hates it when I get plugged," Clint says.
The rest of us aren't crazy about it either. Steve steals Natasha's seat. "Does this happen a lot?"
"Eh," Clint says. "Once or twice."
"Next on the agenda is talking to Tony about getting you better armor."
Clint pats Steve's hand clumsily. "Okay, Mom."
Natasha returns fifteen minutes later and unwraps a roast beef sandwich the size of her head.
"Had so many chances to kill you," Clint grumbles. She props her feet up on the edge of his bed as Bruce walks through the door.
"Well, well," Bruce says. "You do look worse than I do. I knew I'd find someone eventually."
Natasha unfolds a napkin and wipes a small circle of mustard from the corner of her mouth while Clint and Bruce bump fists, shooting victim solidarity or something. "Anyone ever tell you you're an asshole, Banner?"
"Surprisingly enough? I don't think so. That's not the one people tend to go for."
"We're gonna need more chairs," Natasha says.
Steve grips the side of his seat. "Think I should get going."
She passes over a grease-stained sack full of French fries. "Help me out with these," she says, then rises. "I'll ask an orderly."
Steve takes one fry, then another and another, like his hands are getting orders from somewhere other than his brain. They taste like cardboard, but the bag keeps getting lighter as he sits there.
"So Thor went back to Asgard, I think," Bruce says. "Well, no, I know he did. He left a message with JARVIS saying he shall be back soon and not to trouble ourselves with worry over his absence."
"I'm definitely not worried," Natasha says.
"Okay," Bruce says.
She shrugs. "He called me before he caught his ride."
"He did?" Steve says.
She nods and picks up her magazine.
"Hey, Natasha," Bruce says. "You have plans for the rest of that sandwich?"
"Have a party," she replies, handing it to Bruce.
"Thanks," he says. He puts it directly in Steve's hand. Steve drops the empty bag of fries to accept the sandwich and begins to eat, even though he isn't hungry. He isn't tired. Maybe if he talks to Sam, verifies that his friend is okay and everything went as expected, he'll feel something.
"And Stark?" Clint asks. His blinks are twice as long as they should be.
"Tied up in a meeting with some sultan. Or sheik. Some guy with a title and an unreal amount of money."
"I'm not looking forward to cleaning up the mess after Tony tries convincing the Middle East the world doesn't need oil anymore," Steve says. He's surprised by how normal he sounds, considering he bled out yesterday. It's only the serum keeping him upright, putting on clothes, getting out of bed.
Thor takes a breath. "There is a chance. The tesseract..."
"What about it?" Tony asks.
"It has certain properties."
"You think it can restore his memories?"
"I believe it is possible," he hedges.
Natasha slides her hand inside Steve's elbow. "I want to try."
Clint coughs. "All those bodies..."
Bruce touches Clint's shoulder. "He could very well fold under the weight of all that guilt, guys."
She lifts her chin. "If I can find a way to deal with it, so can he."
"Tash-"
"Hawk." Tony glares at him. "Usually it's like a personal victory getting you to utter two sentences in a row. Rip a hole in your lung and suddenly there's no shutting you up." Clint flips him off, then takes in a long, painful-sounding breath and closes his eyes.
"He deserves a chance," Natasha says, directly to Steve.
~
Steve sits at a metal table soldered to the ground. He could bust it up, if he wanted, easily. So could the man sitting on the other side, probably. They hadn't found much in the way of medical records for this guy.
He opens the silver case, exposing the device that, once upon a time, destroyed his entire life.
Steve looked up at the building. His eyes were still red and kind of puffy, he knew. There was no helping that. "I wasn't scared," he said, wiping his hands off on his jacket. They were dirty from the handful of soil he'd tossed on his mother's coffin. "Heck with you, Barnes, for even thinking it."
Bucky raised his hands. "Hey, I believe you."
"They're a buncha nuns. Old ladies in funny outfits. Who's scared of that?"
"I heard my Grandpa Jimmy, he always ran when he saw 'em coming."
They shared a quick, tiny smile before Steve let out a sigh. "How'd you get them to say yes?"
"You'll have to bunk with me. And we'll have to sell newspapers or make double time with the scrap metal, earn our keep somehow."
"I'd be okay in the orphanage, y'know."
"'Course you would." Bucky threw an arm around Steve's neck, his sharp knuckle digging into the part in Steve's hair before he let go. "But now we don't got to find out. That's better, right?"
Steve fills his lungs with recycled air. "Remember who you are," he says.
Then he takes Bucky's flesh and blood hand and places it on the cube.
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