[Avengers and MCU] I'll shut down the city lights (1/2)
For: avengerkink
Prompt: Steve/Bucky- old habits die hard, protective!Bucky. Full prompt here.
Notes: Title is from a line in Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips. This is in fact, more Steve & Bucky than Steve/Bucky, because I haven't gotten that far in my brain with them, I guess.
***
The gap between what he thought he knew and what he actually did know was most likely as wide as the abyss that he didn’t remember falling into, but he did know this:
It was better to be up high and see the battle through a sniper’s scope, but there was something about the immediacy of being on the ground level, something familiar and real, that made him abandon his lookout this time. He didn’t really try to fool himself into thinking that part of that sense of reality wasn’t because Steve was always in the thick of it, but some part of him knew that if Steve was down there, then he should be as well.
And anyway, Steve’s new team already had a sniper, and an excellent one at that. He didn’t need to jockey with Hawkeye for the best perch and shots-he might not be friends with the Avengers but he knew better than to make enemies of them.
It was better here, moving and shooting and seeing the battle ground through eyes that were the Soldier’s, and not, at the same time. The Soldier didn’t think or feel past the cool assessment of the ever-changing field and its assortment of enemy and allied - okay, not allied, but at least not actively hostile - combatants. And it’s there now, at the edge of his awareness, helping him cut through the chaff, instinctively leading him to his objective.
--
There were hazards of getting in the middle of an Avengers battle, and this was one of them:
A giant of a man, dressed in green suit and wielding a huge ball on a chain, was charging toward him with a roar. The ground shook under the pounding and there was no appreciable cover in the destroyed street. The part of him that was the Soldier coolly calculated the caliber and stopping power of the weapons he had on him and provided enemy designation while James Buchanan Barnes thought, a guy with a magic ball and chain, seriously?
“Bucky!” And out of nowhere, Captain America leapt into the fray, patriotically themed everything barreling into Thunderball’s path, coming onto his feet from a roll and planting himself with a wide stance in the giant's way, shield at the ready.
Unstoppable force and immoveable object, the Soldier thought. And he’s in the way of my shot.
Goddamned shit for brains idiot! Bucky added.
There might’ve been a chorus of alarmed/dismayed exclamations from the rest of the Avengers as well. Bucky was somewhat gratified to realize that he wasn’t the only one who thought Steve was being a dumbass.
Even as the Soldier spared a thought of shooting through Steve, Bucky reached out with his metal hand - Some part of him had anticipated that the Kevlar would be smooth and hard to grip- and grabbed Captain America by the scruff of his neck, yanking them both out of the way as hard as he could.
Which was pretty hard, damn Zola to hell forever, and it basically sent Steve flying, ass over teakettle as Thunderball barreled by like a bullet train. Bucky pulled the gun he had meant to use before Steve had butted into the picture, spun with the momentum of the pull, and fired the entire clip into Ball-and-Chain’s back.
He had meant to shoot once at the back of Thunderball’s head. Neat, precise, no wasted ammo. Some obscure, incoherent and half-formed thought made him pull on the trigger repeatedly.
(It made no sense because this Steve was not tiny and frail, for all that he would not stay down, would not stop putting himself between danger and the thing or person he was trying to protect, but it’s wrong because Bucky was supposed to do the protecting.)
The bullets didn’t seem to do anything except make Ball-and-Chain madder, but it quickly became a moot point because another green giant dropped in and Bucky decided to leave Thunderball and the Hulk to their pow-wow.
Steve was getting to his feet. Bucky wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but all the noises seem louder and his blood was pounding and he was pretty sure that he wanted to punch Steve in the face. Steve was looking at him, blue eyes wide and hopeful under the cowl, stumbling toward him without any of the grace and power that Captain America was famous for. “Bucky?”
He was going to punch Steve in the face. He was going to use his metal arm and punch Steve in his stupid, stupid face. But his body betrayed him and instead of what would have been a very satisfactory meeting between fist and nose, his flesh hand reached out and grabbed Steve right at the join of neck and shoulder. Steve’s hand came up over his, startled but still gentle, and he didn’t know the words were coming until he already said them, shaking Steve probably hard enough to make his teeth rattle. “Do that again, and I will shoot you myself, swear to god!”
“Amen,” Someone said, amusement audible even though the tinny, mechanical filter. Bucky released Steve and the Soldier assessed Iron Man as he landed with a clang. “Battle’s pretty much done, guys. Knew it was a great idea to invite you to the club, Bucky-boy, I keep saying we need a Cap wrangler.”
“Shut up, Stark,” Steve and Bucky said at the same time.
Tony held up his hands and muttered, “Some things never change.”
--
He thought about it, after. Thought about the Soldier’s calm assessment of his odds, of not planning to move in the face of Thunderball’s charge. Thought about his own actions after Steve leapt in, and the strange, inexplicable rage.
He had to admit, in the privacy of his not-so-intact mind, that he might be even crazier than he originally thought.
**
When faced with the prospect of dying, most people see their lives flash before their eyes.
The Soldier didn’t see anything before death, because you had to care about living in order to care about dying, and he didn’t really care about anything but the mission.
Bucky Barnes apparently didn’t either, because he did not have time for this bullshit.
Through the comms, he heard Stark and Natasha swear almost in unison when they realized the same thing that Bucky did, while Barton yelled, “Where’s Cap?! The Hulk just knocked out a support beam, the building’s gonna go any minute now!”
“There are still people in here!” Steve’s voice came through bursts of static, because reception just happened to be crappy in a burning, collapsing building - the same burning, collapsing building that Steve was in.
I am going to shoot him, Bucky told himself, his feet already moving on their own. I am going to shoot him in the face, what the fuck.
“Get you butt back out here, Cap - wait, Barnes, what the hell are you doing?!”
He was vaguely aware that Stark tried to chase them, but there was a loud crash as soon as Bucky cleared the entryway. He couldn’t spare a backward look but he was pretty sure that was about all of the front of the first floor and half of the second that came down, he just hoped that Stark wasn’t under all that.
The ground was trembling under his feet and it was raining ceiling debris, some pieces large enough that the super-soldier serum wouldn’t make much of a difference if they hit. Bucky dodged what he could and threw himself forward, because he had to find Steve. Because Steve was an idiot and Bucky would not allow him to die via stupidity.
His comms came to life with a crackle, “-Barnes, he’s coming down from the fifth floor, Wilson just airlifted the last of the civilians out the window, but he won’t be able to make it back in time for Cap.” Stark’s voice was harried, but a part of Bucky that wasn’t busy dodging falling cement was glad that at least Iron Man made it out without being crushed. “JARVIS estimates less than a minute until the place goes, find yourself a nice structurally sound corner and hole up.”
He was probably going to die in the stairwell, but at least the partial collapse put him on floor three without much fuss. He hit floor four just as the steps crumbled beneath him and he managed to jump up and catch the railing to haul himself up halfway to floor five.
“Steve!” He yelled, slamming through the stairway door. Immediately he was hit with a face full of thick, gray smoke. The fire was still burning sluggishly up here, and in the split second after he inhaled and right before he choked on it, he heard a faint, far off sound.
Coughing.
His own lungs seized and started expelling the smoke violently, but he groped blindly toward that disturbingly, terrifyingly familiar sound. And when he caught sight of Captain America, for a second he saw a tiny, fragile shadow in his place.
And before he knew it, before he could even think, he threw himself forward and over the hunched, blue-clad figure.
Then the sky came down.
--
Steve was okay, somehow. Battered and concussed, breathed in enough smoke to irritate his throat and lungs, but nothing he couldn’t bounce back from in a day or two. It was still a bit awe inspiring - what would've killed Steve pre-serum was nothing more than a minor inconvenience now. Bucky read the screens twice to confirm, checked the oxygen cannula and maybe brushed a bit of hair off Steve’s forehead, and then snuck out of the Medical wing the first chance he got.
--
His plan to avoid Steve for a while lined up neatly with his next to-do: get Tony Stark to fix his arm.
“Hey there, Bandit,” Tony muttered absentmindedly as JARVIS opened the workshop doors to admit Bucky. The genius did a comical double-take when he seemed to realize that he wasn't hallucinating the ex-Hydra assassin in his workshop. “Wait a sec, shouldn’t you be in Medical?”
“Arm’s broken,” Bucky answered, flexing the metal one in question. The plates shifted sluggishly and it made a loud grinding noise. “Can’t get it fixed there.”
“Uh-huh,” Tony flicked away some holograms to clear the workbench. “Pretty sure they told me I’d have to wait for the rest of you to heal before they’d let me at the arm.”
“And you’re usually such a stickler for rules.” Bucky replied. When Tony sent him a skeptical look, he shrugged. “Nothing's broken but the arm and head - you can help me with the former and the latter is beyond help.”
“I’ll say,” Tony muttered. “Sit your ass down, then, and let me take a look. Maybe at both.”
“Just the arm.” Bucky warned.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tony nattered. “Shirt off, arm out. Remember, no stabbing, strangling or punching allowed on the premises. Workshop rules.”
The workbench was as large as a full dining room table and Tony kicked one of the rolling stools toward him when he came closer. It was nothing like the Chair from before, so there was only the faintest twinge of unease. He pulled off his hoodie, having had the foresight to wear a tank top underneath that, and sat down.
Tony whistled, eyes on the non-metallic parts of him. “Lovely art project, very…purple. And green. Should they be green? The building only dropped on you like, yesterday. This morning. A few hours ago?”
Tony was working even as he was rambling, so Bucky didn’t mind it much. They got his arm situated and all the tools laid out, and the billionaire genius immediately started opening panels, poking and prodding into the wiring. The faintest smell of burnt metal tickled his nose, but that smell never bothered him nearly as much as the antiseptic.
Bucky shrugged the shoulder that wasn't attached to the arm being fixed. "It'll be fine in another day or two."
"Doesn't it hurt?"
He raised an eyebrow - Tony was wearing a shirt with a hole cut out where the arc reactor used to rest in the center of his chest. Even from a few feet away, the mess of scar tissue was visible. Bucky gave it a pointed glance. "Did that hurt?"
Tony snorted. "Right, on a scale of gunshot wounds to major surgery without anesthesia, I guess being beaten black and blue would be a zero for you. Boy, it sucks that I know exactly how that works." He used a mini-screwdriver to depress some ports inside the arm, and it whirred slightly before quieting. "Still, let me know if anything hurts, because I'm not actually a sadist."
"Hm."
There was silence - even mostly comfortable - for a few minutes, before Tony's mouth started up again. "I gotta ask though, is Cap rubbing off on you? Why'd you run into a collapsing, burning building?"
Bucky stared. The sheer hypocrisy of that question astounded him out of words for a second. "You're not the one with memory problems here, pal, and even I remember that you were running in right behind me."
"I was wearing high tech armor." Tony protested in his defense. "And Steve was being an idiot, but he did have his shield and the serum going for him."
In retrospect, he supposed that Tony had a point. As far as mission objectives went, going into a burning building wasn't high on the reasonableness scale. He wasn't even certain that he could really explain it to himself. “When you spar with Barton, you know how sometimes, you don’t actually throw fists?”
“Sometimes I kick or try to grapple,” Tony replied, frowning a little, though whether that was at Bucky or Bucky’s damaged arm, he couldn’t tell.
“No, it usually looks like a really ineffective palm-strike,” Bucky answered, watching what looked like a very thin and long screwdriver move around delicately amongst the blue-lined circuits under the plates of his wrist. “But you weren’t trying a palm strike, were you?”
Tony didn’t answer for a long minute, hands never stilling as he did something on the inside of his arm that jolted Bucky for a second before all the connections seemed to reset and reconnect. Then he sat back and set down the tools while Bucky flexed his fingers to check for dexterity. “That's the motion for firing my repulsors. I make it out of habit.”
“Yeah. It’s the same thing.” He rotated his wrist and the cybernetics responded smoothly, as good as new. He wished he could say the same thing for the rest of him, but the knockoff super serum didn't come with instant healing or invincibility.
"Habit," Tony repeated incredulously. "Jumping in the fire to save Rogers' bacon is habit?"
Bucky thought about it for a second and shrugged again. His eyes had seen and his body had moved, quicker than even thought. "Hydra was big on wiping everything, but they usually leave muscle memory alone." That was about as adept as an explanation as any, even though Tony looked dissatisfied. "I never said it was a good reason."
"Unbelievable," Tony snorted. "Fine then, okay," he started throwing the various tools back into their boxes and drawers. "Scram, you. Steve's going to come looking for you the minute he wakes up, and I don't need the lecture."
**
He stared.
The man lying at his feet was the mission. He was sure of that, it was clear as crystal.
But when he tried to pull up the actual objectives, what he was supposed to do with the man...he didn't know what the mission was.
(No, there were two voices in his head, echoing and overlapping and confusing as hell. 'Two targets, level six. I want confirmed death in ten hours.' mashed together with 'the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight, I'm following him'.)
The Soldier pushed himself up on one elbow - he and the mission were on the ground, covered in dust and bruises. The room they were in was mostly wrecked, concrete and rebar and sparking electronics littering the ground. It looked like it might have been a command center for bunker, at some point.
The mission was wearing eye-catching red, white and blue. There was a round metal disc painted the same color scheme - primary offensive and defensive weapon, impenetrable by almost all known ordinance. He didn't remember learning those facts, but it was there in his mind anyway.
The other man was still unconscious, bleeding sluggishly from a cut on his forehead - minor, probably already healing. The Soldier got to his feet to perform a more thorough check and suppressed a wince - his own injuries were not severe enough to compromise the mission, but it was not optimal.
This entire situation was not optimal - he had no concrete information, no clear mission objectives, only this man and this destroyed room and the vague sense that he needed to do something, and soon.
Fine, then.
In the absence of specific mission objectives, he fell back to the basics - he wasn’t sure if his mission was to kill the man or keep him alive, but living is transient and death was forever, so he should probably keep the man alive for now. If it does turn out that the mission was confirmed death in ten hours, then he can wrap it up then.
The man seemed to be suffering from nothing worse than a hard knock to the head, judging from the large bump on his skull. The diagnosis didn’t take long, so he turned his attention to their current location, which was not ideal. Over the occasional rumble or clatter of settling debris, the crackle of sparks here or there, he could hear other explosions, gunfire, and shouting. Not close enough to be worrisome, but only for now.
So, objectives: in the short term, get himself and the mission to a secure, defensible location. Medical attention also would not be amiss. He doubted the man would confirm that the Asset’s objective was to kill him even if he woke up, but consciousness would be preferable for the greater mobility and chance for additional intelligence.
He checked his weapons and the destroyed room - the door led out to a large hallway, with concrete walls and floors, and red flashing emergency lights along the side with flickering florescent lights on top. There was a large freight elevator at one end, and the entire hall was still clear for now. The collapsed walls of the room they were in seemed to only lead to other rooms or server banks, and he had the sense that they were underground.
The shield conveniently attached to the man via the harness/straps/magnets, so he stuck the disc to the man’s back and then hoisted him up in a fireman’s carry. The elevator display at the end of the hall showed ‘No Service’, which wasn’t a surprise due to the explosions he could still hear going off distantly. A bit encouragement from his metal arm opened the double-doors and he carefully peered into the shaft.
The actual elevator car was far below them, completely powered off, and from where they were, it didn’t seem to be more than a few floors to the top. He shrugged to himself, careful to not jostle the mission - there was some truth in the saying that no one ever looked up.
It took some juggling and creative use of the various straps on both of their combat uniforms, but he quickly secured the mission so that he was in no danger of falling. The asset tested his grip on the elevator cables, making sure that he would be able to climb with their combined weight, and stepped into the shaft. It was only the work of seconds to close the doors behind him.
--
He met no appreciable resistance until they were nearly out of the base - the strange men (?) dressed in the full-body suits of lurid yellow didn’t count, their organization was terrible and their aim even worse. He was able to pick all of them off just from the racket they made approaching.
The ease of the extract must have lulled him into a false sense of security, because he was completely taken by surprise when he was moving through what appeared to be an office - there was a thud behind him and a voice called out cheerfully, “Hey, I found the Dynamic Duo!”
He spun and took two shots without getting a clear line of sight - both of which would have hit had the other man not ducked and rolled. The Soldier took cover behind an overturned table and dropped the mission from his back - this wasn’t one of the incompetent goons in bee-keeper suits; he was going to need both hands free for this.
“Barnes, you’d better have a good reason for taking potshots at me,” was that a bow and arrow in the enemy combatant’s hands? “You can’t still be sore about the knife throwing contest, right? That was like, three weeks ago!”
The Soldier didn’t answer. A quick glance showed that the tall metal cabinet was the archer’s shield of choice, his weapon drawn and aimed. The same part of him that knew all the ways the disc on the mission’s back could be used also knew that the man had deadly speed and even deadlier aim.
“C’mon, the mission’s over, we’re just doing clean up now,” bow-and-arrow was saying and he fought the urge to shake his head. The mission wasn’t over, the mission was still lying there, in the corner, waiting for extraction. “It’s great that you’ve got Cap, we were worried for a bit there when we heard the explosion, but it looks like everything’s under control, right? Let’s head back to the jet and get you two some medical attention, alright?”
There was a clatter of footfalls, and the archer swore even as a small contingent of other men - masked and in black Kevlar instead of the yellow suits - ran around the corner with weapons at the ready. “Dammit, Johnson! This is Hawkeye, call the team off!”
The Soldier took the distraction and rolled from cover, double-tapping the first three approaching combatants in their center mass, and taking another shot at Hawkeye, who was still yelling at everyone to “Stop and calm the fuck down!”
Unfortunately, his momentum took him from the desk to the spot where the archer had dropped in on them, and something hit him like an iron bar across his shoulders just as he came to his feet. He caught a glimpse of dark red hair before the woman swung her body with her legs still wrapped around his shoulders/neck, and he instinctively turned and tried to slam her off against the wall.
She held on stubbornly and he caught her wrist before one of her electrified gauntlets could catch him in the neck, but she reversed her grip and threw all of her weight to the side, toppling him over with a twist. They landed in an awkward heap with her mostly on top.
He rolled with the motion and parried no less than three swings for his jugular and one grab of his hair. He had her throat in his hands, but his grip loosed when she got a good shot at his diaphragm that left him gasping for air. She flexed with catlike grace and he found himself with her behind him in the beginning of a chokehold that he barely managed to insert a hand into.
It didn’t matter. She shouted, “Clint! NOW!”
He tried to dodge to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. There was a stabbing sensation in his thigh, sharp and burning through the thick material of his pants. Black spots appeared in his vision almost immediately and weakness spread like wildfire through his limbs, much too fast for known tranquilizers and poisons, especially for him.
Sorry, pal, the last thought he had was of the mission as the world swam around him and went dark. I guess this is the end of the line.
** Next
Prompt: Steve/Bucky- old habits die hard, protective!Bucky. Full prompt here.
Notes: Title is from a line in Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips. This is in fact, more Steve & Bucky than Steve/Bucky, because I haven't gotten that far in my brain with them, I guess.
***
The gap between what he thought he knew and what he actually did know was most likely as wide as the abyss that he didn’t remember falling into, but he did know this:
It was better to be up high and see the battle through a sniper’s scope, but there was something about the immediacy of being on the ground level, something familiar and real, that made him abandon his lookout this time. He didn’t really try to fool himself into thinking that part of that sense of reality wasn’t because Steve was always in the thick of it, but some part of him knew that if Steve was down there, then he should be as well.
And anyway, Steve’s new team already had a sniper, and an excellent one at that. He didn’t need to jockey with Hawkeye for the best perch and shots-he might not be friends with the Avengers but he knew better than to make enemies of them.
It was better here, moving and shooting and seeing the battle ground through eyes that were the Soldier’s, and not, at the same time. The Soldier didn’t think or feel past the cool assessment of the ever-changing field and its assortment of enemy and allied - okay, not allied, but at least not actively hostile - combatants. And it’s there now, at the edge of his awareness, helping him cut through the chaff, instinctively leading him to his objective.
--
There were hazards of getting in the middle of an Avengers battle, and this was one of them:
A giant of a man, dressed in green suit and wielding a huge ball on a chain, was charging toward him with a roar. The ground shook under the pounding and there was no appreciable cover in the destroyed street. The part of him that was the Soldier coolly calculated the caliber and stopping power of the weapons he had on him and provided enemy designation while James Buchanan Barnes thought, a guy with a magic ball and chain, seriously?
“Bucky!” And out of nowhere, Captain America leapt into the fray, patriotically themed everything barreling into Thunderball’s path, coming onto his feet from a roll and planting himself with a wide stance in the giant's way, shield at the ready.
Unstoppable force and immoveable object, the Soldier thought. And he’s in the way of my shot.
Goddamned shit for brains idiot! Bucky added.
There might’ve been a chorus of alarmed/dismayed exclamations from the rest of the Avengers as well. Bucky was somewhat gratified to realize that he wasn’t the only one who thought Steve was being a dumbass.
Even as the Soldier spared a thought of shooting through Steve, Bucky reached out with his metal hand - Some part of him had anticipated that the Kevlar would be smooth and hard to grip- and grabbed Captain America by the scruff of his neck, yanking them both out of the way as hard as he could.
Which was pretty hard, damn Zola to hell forever, and it basically sent Steve flying, ass over teakettle as Thunderball barreled by like a bullet train. Bucky pulled the gun he had meant to use before Steve had butted into the picture, spun with the momentum of the pull, and fired the entire clip into Ball-and-Chain’s back.
He had meant to shoot once at the back of Thunderball’s head. Neat, precise, no wasted ammo. Some obscure, incoherent and half-formed thought made him pull on the trigger repeatedly.
(It made no sense because this Steve was not tiny and frail, for all that he would not stay down, would not stop putting himself between danger and the thing or person he was trying to protect, but it’s wrong because Bucky was supposed to do the protecting.)
The bullets didn’t seem to do anything except make Ball-and-Chain madder, but it quickly became a moot point because another green giant dropped in and Bucky decided to leave Thunderball and the Hulk to their pow-wow.
Steve was getting to his feet. Bucky wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but all the noises seem louder and his blood was pounding and he was pretty sure that he wanted to punch Steve in the face. Steve was looking at him, blue eyes wide and hopeful under the cowl, stumbling toward him without any of the grace and power that Captain America was famous for. “Bucky?”
He was going to punch Steve in the face. He was going to use his metal arm and punch Steve in his stupid, stupid face. But his body betrayed him and instead of what would have been a very satisfactory meeting between fist and nose, his flesh hand reached out and grabbed Steve right at the join of neck and shoulder. Steve’s hand came up over his, startled but still gentle, and he didn’t know the words were coming until he already said them, shaking Steve probably hard enough to make his teeth rattle. “Do that again, and I will shoot you myself, swear to god!”
“Amen,” Someone said, amusement audible even though the tinny, mechanical filter. Bucky released Steve and the Soldier assessed Iron Man as he landed with a clang. “Battle’s pretty much done, guys. Knew it was a great idea to invite you to the club, Bucky-boy, I keep saying we need a Cap wrangler.”
“Shut up, Stark,” Steve and Bucky said at the same time.
Tony held up his hands and muttered, “Some things never change.”
--
He thought about it, after. Thought about the Soldier’s calm assessment of his odds, of not planning to move in the face of Thunderball’s charge. Thought about his own actions after Steve leapt in, and the strange, inexplicable rage.
He had to admit, in the privacy of his not-so-intact mind, that he might be even crazier than he originally thought.
**
When faced with the prospect of dying, most people see their lives flash before their eyes.
The Soldier didn’t see anything before death, because you had to care about living in order to care about dying, and he didn’t really care about anything but the mission.
Bucky Barnes apparently didn’t either, because he did not have time for this bullshit.
Through the comms, he heard Stark and Natasha swear almost in unison when they realized the same thing that Bucky did, while Barton yelled, “Where’s Cap?! The Hulk just knocked out a support beam, the building’s gonna go any minute now!”
“There are still people in here!” Steve’s voice came through bursts of static, because reception just happened to be crappy in a burning, collapsing building - the same burning, collapsing building that Steve was in.
I am going to shoot him, Bucky told himself, his feet already moving on their own. I am going to shoot him in the face, what the fuck.
“Get you butt back out here, Cap - wait, Barnes, what the hell are you doing?!”
He was vaguely aware that Stark tried to chase them, but there was a loud crash as soon as Bucky cleared the entryway. He couldn’t spare a backward look but he was pretty sure that was about all of the front of the first floor and half of the second that came down, he just hoped that Stark wasn’t under all that.
The ground was trembling under his feet and it was raining ceiling debris, some pieces large enough that the super-soldier serum wouldn’t make much of a difference if they hit. Bucky dodged what he could and threw himself forward, because he had to find Steve. Because Steve was an idiot and Bucky would not allow him to die via stupidity.
His comms came to life with a crackle, “-Barnes, he’s coming down from the fifth floor, Wilson just airlifted the last of the civilians out the window, but he won’t be able to make it back in time for Cap.” Stark’s voice was harried, but a part of Bucky that wasn’t busy dodging falling cement was glad that at least Iron Man made it out without being crushed. “JARVIS estimates less than a minute until the place goes, find yourself a nice structurally sound corner and hole up.”
He was probably going to die in the stairwell, but at least the partial collapse put him on floor three without much fuss. He hit floor four just as the steps crumbled beneath him and he managed to jump up and catch the railing to haul himself up halfway to floor five.
“Steve!” He yelled, slamming through the stairway door. Immediately he was hit with a face full of thick, gray smoke. The fire was still burning sluggishly up here, and in the split second after he inhaled and right before he choked on it, he heard a faint, far off sound.
Coughing.
His own lungs seized and started expelling the smoke violently, but he groped blindly toward that disturbingly, terrifyingly familiar sound. And when he caught sight of Captain America, for a second he saw a tiny, fragile shadow in his place.
And before he knew it, before he could even think, he threw himself forward and over the hunched, blue-clad figure.
Then the sky came down.
--
Steve was okay, somehow. Battered and concussed, breathed in enough smoke to irritate his throat and lungs, but nothing he couldn’t bounce back from in a day or two. It was still a bit awe inspiring - what would've killed Steve pre-serum was nothing more than a minor inconvenience now. Bucky read the screens twice to confirm, checked the oxygen cannula and maybe brushed a bit of hair off Steve’s forehead, and then snuck out of the Medical wing the first chance he got.
--
His plan to avoid Steve for a while lined up neatly with his next to-do: get Tony Stark to fix his arm.
“Hey there, Bandit,” Tony muttered absentmindedly as JARVIS opened the workshop doors to admit Bucky. The genius did a comical double-take when he seemed to realize that he wasn't hallucinating the ex-Hydra assassin in his workshop. “Wait a sec, shouldn’t you be in Medical?”
“Arm’s broken,” Bucky answered, flexing the metal one in question. The plates shifted sluggishly and it made a loud grinding noise. “Can’t get it fixed there.”
“Uh-huh,” Tony flicked away some holograms to clear the workbench. “Pretty sure they told me I’d have to wait for the rest of you to heal before they’d let me at the arm.”
“And you’re usually such a stickler for rules.” Bucky replied. When Tony sent him a skeptical look, he shrugged. “Nothing's broken but the arm and head - you can help me with the former and the latter is beyond help.”
“I’ll say,” Tony muttered. “Sit your ass down, then, and let me take a look. Maybe at both.”
“Just the arm.” Bucky warned.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tony nattered. “Shirt off, arm out. Remember, no stabbing, strangling or punching allowed on the premises. Workshop rules.”
The workbench was as large as a full dining room table and Tony kicked one of the rolling stools toward him when he came closer. It was nothing like the Chair from before, so there was only the faintest twinge of unease. He pulled off his hoodie, having had the foresight to wear a tank top underneath that, and sat down.
Tony whistled, eyes on the non-metallic parts of him. “Lovely art project, very…purple. And green. Should they be green? The building only dropped on you like, yesterday. This morning. A few hours ago?”
Tony was working even as he was rambling, so Bucky didn’t mind it much. They got his arm situated and all the tools laid out, and the billionaire genius immediately started opening panels, poking and prodding into the wiring. The faintest smell of burnt metal tickled his nose, but that smell never bothered him nearly as much as the antiseptic.
Bucky shrugged the shoulder that wasn't attached to the arm being fixed. "It'll be fine in another day or two."
"Doesn't it hurt?"
He raised an eyebrow - Tony was wearing a shirt with a hole cut out where the arc reactor used to rest in the center of his chest. Even from a few feet away, the mess of scar tissue was visible. Bucky gave it a pointed glance. "Did that hurt?"
Tony snorted. "Right, on a scale of gunshot wounds to major surgery without anesthesia, I guess being beaten black and blue would be a zero for you. Boy, it sucks that I know exactly how that works." He used a mini-screwdriver to depress some ports inside the arm, and it whirred slightly before quieting. "Still, let me know if anything hurts, because I'm not actually a sadist."
"Hm."
There was silence - even mostly comfortable - for a few minutes, before Tony's mouth started up again. "I gotta ask though, is Cap rubbing off on you? Why'd you run into a collapsing, burning building?"
Bucky stared. The sheer hypocrisy of that question astounded him out of words for a second. "You're not the one with memory problems here, pal, and even I remember that you were running in right behind me."
"I was wearing high tech armor." Tony protested in his defense. "And Steve was being an idiot, but he did have his shield and the serum going for him."
In retrospect, he supposed that Tony had a point. As far as mission objectives went, going into a burning building wasn't high on the reasonableness scale. He wasn't even certain that he could really explain it to himself. “When you spar with Barton, you know how sometimes, you don’t actually throw fists?”
“Sometimes I kick or try to grapple,” Tony replied, frowning a little, though whether that was at Bucky or Bucky’s damaged arm, he couldn’t tell.
“No, it usually looks like a really ineffective palm-strike,” Bucky answered, watching what looked like a very thin and long screwdriver move around delicately amongst the blue-lined circuits under the plates of his wrist. “But you weren’t trying a palm strike, were you?”
Tony didn’t answer for a long minute, hands never stilling as he did something on the inside of his arm that jolted Bucky for a second before all the connections seemed to reset and reconnect. Then he sat back and set down the tools while Bucky flexed his fingers to check for dexterity. “That's the motion for firing my repulsors. I make it out of habit.”
“Yeah. It’s the same thing.” He rotated his wrist and the cybernetics responded smoothly, as good as new. He wished he could say the same thing for the rest of him, but the knockoff super serum didn't come with instant healing or invincibility.
"Habit," Tony repeated incredulously. "Jumping in the fire to save Rogers' bacon is habit?"
Bucky thought about it for a second and shrugged again. His eyes had seen and his body had moved, quicker than even thought. "Hydra was big on wiping everything, but they usually leave muscle memory alone." That was about as adept as an explanation as any, even though Tony looked dissatisfied. "I never said it was a good reason."
"Unbelievable," Tony snorted. "Fine then, okay," he started throwing the various tools back into their boxes and drawers. "Scram, you. Steve's going to come looking for you the minute he wakes up, and I don't need the lecture."
**
He stared.
The man lying at his feet was the mission. He was sure of that, it was clear as crystal.
But when he tried to pull up the actual objectives, what he was supposed to do with the man...he didn't know what the mission was.
(No, there were two voices in his head, echoing and overlapping and confusing as hell. 'Two targets, level six. I want confirmed death in ten hours.' mashed together with 'the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight, I'm following him'.)
The Soldier pushed himself up on one elbow - he and the mission were on the ground, covered in dust and bruises. The room they were in was mostly wrecked, concrete and rebar and sparking electronics littering the ground. It looked like it might have been a command center for bunker, at some point.
The mission was wearing eye-catching red, white and blue. There was a round metal disc painted the same color scheme - primary offensive and defensive weapon, impenetrable by almost all known ordinance. He didn't remember learning those facts, but it was there in his mind anyway.
The other man was still unconscious, bleeding sluggishly from a cut on his forehead - minor, probably already healing. The Soldier got to his feet to perform a more thorough check and suppressed a wince - his own injuries were not severe enough to compromise the mission, but it was not optimal.
This entire situation was not optimal - he had no concrete information, no clear mission objectives, only this man and this destroyed room and the vague sense that he needed to do something, and soon.
Fine, then.
In the absence of specific mission objectives, he fell back to the basics - he wasn’t sure if his mission was to kill the man or keep him alive, but living is transient and death was forever, so he should probably keep the man alive for now. If it does turn out that the mission was confirmed death in ten hours, then he can wrap it up then.
The man seemed to be suffering from nothing worse than a hard knock to the head, judging from the large bump on his skull. The diagnosis didn’t take long, so he turned his attention to their current location, which was not ideal. Over the occasional rumble or clatter of settling debris, the crackle of sparks here or there, he could hear other explosions, gunfire, and shouting. Not close enough to be worrisome, but only for now.
So, objectives: in the short term, get himself and the mission to a secure, defensible location. Medical attention also would not be amiss. He doubted the man would confirm that the Asset’s objective was to kill him even if he woke up, but consciousness would be preferable for the greater mobility and chance for additional intelligence.
He checked his weapons and the destroyed room - the door led out to a large hallway, with concrete walls and floors, and red flashing emergency lights along the side with flickering florescent lights on top. There was a large freight elevator at one end, and the entire hall was still clear for now. The collapsed walls of the room they were in seemed to only lead to other rooms or server banks, and he had the sense that they were underground.
The shield conveniently attached to the man via the harness/straps/magnets, so he stuck the disc to the man’s back and then hoisted him up in a fireman’s carry. The elevator display at the end of the hall showed ‘No Service’, which wasn’t a surprise due to the explosions he could still hear going off distantly. A bit encouragement from his metal arm opened the double-doors and he carefully peered into the shaft.
The actual elevator car was far below them, completely powered off, and from where they were, it didn’t seem to be more than a few floors to the top. He shrugged to himself, careful to not jostle the mission - there was some truth in the saying that no one ever looked up.
It took some juggling and creative use of the various straps on both of their combat uniforms, but he quickly secured the mission so that he was in no danger of falling. The asset tested his grip on the elevator cables, making sure that he would be able to climb with their combined weight, and stepped into the shaft. It was only the work of seconds to close the doors behind him.
--
He met no appreciable resistance until they were nearly out of the base - the strange men (?) dressed in the full-body suits of lurid yellow didn’t count, their organization was terrible and their aim even worse. He was able to pick all of them off just from the racket they made approaching.
The ease of the extract must have lulled him into a false sense of security, because he was completely taken by surprise when he was moving through what appeared to be an office - there was a thud behind him and a voice called out cheerfully, “Hey, I found the Dynamic Duo!”
He spun and took two shots without getting a clear line of sight - both of which would have hit had the other man not ducked and rolled. The Soldier took cover behind an overturned table and dropped the mission from his back - this wasn’t one of the incompetent goons in bee-keeper suits; he was going to need both hands free for this.
“Barnes, you’d better have a good reason for taking potshots at me,” was that a bow and arrow in the enemy combatant’s hands? “You can’t still be sore about the knife throwing contest, right? That was like, three weeks ago!”
The Soldier didn’t answer. A quick glance showed that the tall metal cabinet was the archer’s shield of choice, his weapon drawn and aimed. The same part of him that knew all the ways the disc on the mission’s back could be used also knew that the man had deadly speed and even deadlier aim.
“C’mon, the mission’s over, we’re just doing clean up now,” bow-and-arrow was saying and he fought the urge to shake his head. The mission wasn’t over, the mission was still lying there, in the corner, waiting for extraction. “It’s great that you’ve got Cap, we were worried for a bit there when we heard the explosion, but it looks like everything’s under control, right? Let’s head back to the jet and get you two some medical attention, alright?”
There was a clatter of footfalls, and the archer swore even as a small contingent of other men - masked and in black Kevlar instead of the yellow suits - ran around the corner with weapons at the ready. “Dammit, Johnson! This is Hawkeye, call the team off!”
The Soldier took the distraction and rolled from cover, double-tapping the first three approaching combatants in their center mass, and taking another shot at Hawkeye, who was still yelling at everyone to “Stop and calm the fuck down!”
Unfortunately, his momentum took him from the desk to the spot where the archer had dropped in on them, and something hit him like an iron bar across his shoulders just as he came to his feet. He caught a glimpse of dark red hair before the woman swung her body with her legs still wrapped around his shoulders/neck, and he instinctively turned and tried to slam her off against the wall.
She held on stubbornly and he caught her wrist before one of her electrified gauntlets could catch him in the neck, but she reversed her grip and threw all of her weight to the side, toppling him over with a twist. They landed in an awkward heap with her mostly on top.
He rolled with the motion and parried no less than three swings for his jugular and one grab of his hair. He had her throat in his hands, but his grip loosed when she got a good shot at his diaphragm that left him gasping for air. She flexed with catlike grace and he found himself with her behind him in the beginning of a chokehold that he barely managed to insert a hand into.
It didn’t matter. She shouted, “Clint! NOW!”
He tried to dodge to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. There was a stabbing sensation in his thigh, sharp and burning through the thick material of his pants. Black spots appeared in his vision almost immediately and weakness spread like wildfire through his limbs, much too fast for known tranquilizers and poisons, especially for him.
Sorry, pal, the last thought he had was of the mission as the world swam around him and went dark. I guess this is the end of the line.
** Next