Chapter Text
Monday, December 16th, 1991.
Rain beat down like lashes of a whip. The Winter Soldier’s face dripped water in cold tendrils, flicking off his chin as he ran, arms pumping to either side of him. He could see barely anything in the night, the moon a haze through too many layers of black satin clouds. Only trees, a storm, and a single winding road.
The car was easy to keep track of, the headlights causing roving beams of light to flash against the water droplets suspended in the air. The Winter Soldier gained on the car, slowly surpassing it, even though his boots fumbled in muddy ground. He was trained for this. In and out. Be quick, efficient. He wasn’t supposed to have memories—wasn’t supposed to even think—and he didn’t. Couldn’t remember anything except the commands of the current moment, the current mission. That was all he existed for.
The words, Russian, echoed in his head on loop. Find the car. Kill anything that moves. Use the device. Return home.
This repeated, like a broken record in his mind, as he barreled ahead of the automobile, sleek black against tarmac gray.
Find the car. It was unclear whether the driver knew he was there or not, the car moving quickly but sticking to the lane. The Winter Soldier jumped into the middle of the road, giving the driver no choice but to react. Headlights blinded him, but his stance didn’t waver, a confusing anger etched into every inch of his features.
The car swerved violently to avoid him, leaving him standing in darkness as the vehicle found a ditch. It did little to slow the car, simply bouncing it into the air before it traveled another few dozen feet into a tree. The front crumpled like tinfoil.
Icy water wormed down the Winter Soldier’s neck as he approached the vehicle. He didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t register the sounds of panic coming from within the car. His commands didn’t remind him to care.
Kill anything that moves. In the driver’s seat, a man with sharp features, middle-aged, his hands hovering frantically over the woman in the seat next to him. She was already slumped over, eyes glassy. A younger woman in the back screamed, trying to get out of the car, but the door was jammed.
The man in the driver’s seat saw the Winter Soldier coming. His eyebrows turned up in confusion, his broken voice carrying through the shattered window. “Barnes?”
The Winter Soldier scowled. The English-sounding word barely passed through his Russian-calibrated brain, and even then, it was just that. A word, not a name. Something unfamiliar.
As the Winter Soldier advanced, the man’s eyes widened. The man’s face—the blatant fear, confusion, betrayal—would impress into his nightmares for decades. But right now all he saw was movement. A mark.
The car door, warped from the crash, wrenched open beneath his metal arm. The man’s resistance was equally futile—the Winter Soldier slammed his head into the steering wheel until his skull cracked.
It was supposed to look like an accident.
Use the device. Return home. Someone was still screaming. The woman in the back held a bundle of cloth to her chest that the Winter Soldier hadn’t noticed before. With her free hand, she frantically tried to open the jammed door, her body pressed up against it. “Stop!” she begged, sobbing. But the Winter Soldier’s commands were already repeating.
Find the car, his mind said again. He stepped back from the driver’s seat, moving to the following door, which ripped open just as easily. The woman’s low heels struggled to find purchase on the leather seats as she pressed as far away from the Winter Soldier as she could manage. “What do you want?” she screamed. “Stop! Stop, please!”
Kill anything that moves.
The Winter Soldier disposed of the woman with one quick swing to her head. Blood sprayed his face, the car seats, the window. His hair dripped a watered-down red, running down his face and off his nose. A drop of it landed on the bundle of cloth.
No—more than that. A baby. Its wide brown eyes, flecks of gold in the iris, met the Winter Soldier’s.
They stared at one another, unblinking. The baby didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.
For a moment the commands in his head stopped cycling. The only sounds were the wind howling somewhere distant, the rain battering the metal roof.
The Winter Soldier blinked first.
Use the device.
Turning away from the child, the Winter Soldier pulled out a metal cube, the size of a six-sided die. Letters inscribed into its face glowed a faint green. Not English or Russian, but something else, alien. He opened the trunk of the vehicle, finding the case he was instructed to return, and opened it to check the contents. Vials. Nobody told the Winter Soldier what they were, and he didn’t have the mind to wonder.
He grabbed the case and closed the trunk, surveying the car one last time for anything that seemed amiss. An accident. That’s all it was.
Discharging the cube, the world stretched. Bent. Collapsed. It thundered, angry at the disturbance, before disappearing into an inky black.
For a second, he floated, unsure whether his eyes were open or closed. Then the world winked back to existence, as if he’d never been gone at all.
The Winter Soldier—on his back in the dirt—took a disorienting breath. His head pounded, accompanied with a dizziness that made him weak. He was beneath the same tree, or at least he thought so—was it always that big? The rain had stopped, a clear sky illuminated by moonlight. The car was completely missing. Still dripping wet, he stood, surveying the area. Even the skid marks in the mud were gone. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t have to. Didn’t try to.
The bundle of cloth had come with him. The baby laid still, eyes now closed. The Winter Soldier did not detect movement.
Return home, his mind told him. Clutching the vials, the cube device, and nothing more, the Winter Soldier followed instructions, leaving the child unconscious at his heels.
When the Winter Soldier laid on a metal operating table, the world fuzzy beneath the drugs they’d given him, he realized something was off. In lieu of strapping him down, they’d plunged gorilla-sized needles into his forearm until he could barely keep his eyes open. That itself was a giveaway. His chair was always ready for him. Bolted to the floor, with straps made of a steel compound that was strong enough to hold him down whenever he was stupid enough to struggle. If he wasn’t on a mission, it was the chair or the cryochamber. Neither of the two were ready.
Something was different—wrong, maybe. But through the haze of his mind, he couldn’t draw a thought before it scattered into the abyss.
Scientists hovered above, checking his vitals, shining lights into his eyes. He didn’t understand the words said over him, but he heard them all the same.
“The device must have been calibrated wrong,” a scientist said in Russian. “The asset doesn’t disobey commands.”
Another voice agreed, “It’s the only thing that makes sense. We would have heard something, otherwise. The mistake cost us years, but we have the device back now.”
“And the vials. We gain more than one soldier tonight.”
The drugs pulled at the edges of his mind, and he let them, falling into a wooly unconsciousness that didn’t quite count as sleep.
🕸
Sunday, December 9th, 2016.
Bucky sat up with a start, his sleep shirt clinging to his back from the sweat. It wasn’t the first time he’d had nightmares since being rescued from Hydra. It would be far from the last. But that didn’t make it any less real, the sound of the screams that Bucky hadn’t cared about at the time. The feeling of Howard Stark’s head in his metal grip, the sight of his brain rolling down the inner windshield. Maria’s slumped body in the passenger seat. The screams of Tony’s wife, June, as Bucky approached her, as still and strong as a python. Her blood spraying across Bucky’s cheek.
He pulled the covers off, too hot, shaking. He tried to breathe. It’s what Steve always told him to do. Steve was in the other room, so Bucky tried to be quiet about it, but he must have been making noise in his sleep, because it wasn’t long before a faint knock sounded at the door.
“Bucky?” Steve asked through the wood.
Bucky managed little more than a grunt, but both of them had super-hearing, so it was plenty. The man entered the bedroom, choppy hair mussed from sleep. “Are you okay?”
Bucky was still trying to breathe, and Steve came and sat next to him, putting a steady hand on his back. Bucky avoided looking at him, his eyes instead roving through the open bedroom door to the rest of the tiny apartment. There was a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a couch with a rumpled blanket.
It had been just over three months since they’d been made into war criminals, after the whole thing with the Accords and freeing half the ex-Avengers from the raft. They’d been on the run ever since, hopping between apartments. They stayed close to New York, partially in case something happened, and partially because of a reverse-psychology strategy that Bucky couldn’t decide was idiotic or genius: who would look for runaways in the place they should be running from? It had been working so far, against his better judgement, so it couldn’t be completely stupid.
This current place—one of the smaller ones they’d gotten—was near Boston. Bucky would have said it was nice to be out in actual cities again, except that everything was so different, and he couldn’t leave the house much anyway. He figured he deserved it, the whole can’t-be-seen-in-public, confined-indoors thing. But Steve didn’t.
He certainly didn’t deserve sleeping on the couch while Bucky got the bed. But when Bucky took the couch before Steve could, the other man just laid down on the fucking floor. “The bed will go unused, then,” Steve had said. Bucky scowled at the memory, even if it was a welcome distraction from the nightmare. He’d taken the bed just so that Steve could have something soft to sleep on. Turns out even super-serum couldn’t cure Steve’s martyrdom.
When things died down a bit, enough to get Bucky out of the country without the government seizing him, he’d go to Wakanda. It was best for everyone, what with the brainwashing still latent somewhere inside of him. He didn’t know how long it would be before something stirred it up again, turning Bucky into a mindless killer. Wakanda could help, Steve had said. Therapy and time outdoors, with technology strong enough to restrain him if he went super-soldier.
And they had cryochambers. Bucky shuddered at the thought of going back into one of those things, but he would do it, if it meant that he would never hurt anyone again. There was a chance they’d find some way to cure his brainwashing while he was under. If they didn’t, he was fine with never waking up. Maybe, if he was lucky, someone would shoot him in the head like they’d done with the other supersoldiers in Siberia. It would be a painless way to go. More than Bucky deserved.
“Nightmare?” Steve asked, misinterpreting the tight expression on Bucky’s face. Well, interpreting it correctly, but a couple minutes off.
Bucky nodded in response, the terror that had gripped his heart slowly loosening as he sucked in one shaky breath after another. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost six in the morning, so it was probably fine to get up for the day. Bucky wasn’t ready to try sleeping again anytime soon.
He pushed himself up so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed, and Steve adjusted so that there was space. Maybe not to crowd him—or maybe because he was afraid of him. Flexing his arm, Bucky thought about how glad he was that the metal one got destroyed—he shouldn’t be trusted with a weapon like that.
“What was it about?” Steve asked. “The nightmare?”
He was just trying to help, but Bucky didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to lock it away and never think about it again. Ever since he got his mind back—a fraction of it, anyway—he avoided thinking about all the lives ended by his hands.
He knew that he should be replaying those memories over and over. It was what he deserved, to face the consequences of what he did. But then he’d lose it, and he couldn’t afford to lose it. Not now, when one wrong step could get him a one-way ticket to the highest security prison the American government had to offer.
Not because Bucky was afraid of prison, but because Steve would do anything to get him out. He’d probably go in guns blazing, just to get locked up himself, or worse. And Bucky couldn’t deal with one more life on his hands—not Steve’s, not anyone’s. So the best way to not lose his shit was to avoid every memory of his past life like the plague. It was all he could do to keep himself stable, standing, and speaking (well, grunting, mostly), and keeping that stupid furrow out of Captain America’s perfect brow.
Steve was doing that last thing now, giving Bucky a look that made him want to hit something. Probably because Bucky wasn’t saying anything. Normally he’d mutter some complete bullshit to appease Steve enough to leave him alone, but something about the nightmare was bothering him. Steve was always saying that talking about your feelings is supposed to help, or something, so he figured he might as well give it a shot.
“The Starks,” Bucky said, voice rough from disuse.
Steve nodded, his lips forming a tight line. He didn’t need any further explanation. Drumming his fingers absently against his own leg, he asked, “Can I make you some breakfast? Coffee?”
That sounded like the least appetizing thing in the world, but Bucky nodded, just to give Steve something to do. Then he’d stop doing the thing where he flapped his mouth.
Of course, Bucky forgot that Steve was good at multitasking. As Bucky changed from his sleep shirt (tight, black) into a day shirt (tight, black), Steve headed to the kitchen. With the apartment being so small, the sound of eggs crackling did little to stop Steve’s voice from reaching his ears.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve said.
Bucky ignored this, dropping heavily into a stool at the kitchen island. There was no dining table, just the tiny kitchen—boxed in by the island—and a couch with a square TV so old that even Bucky could tell it was ancient. They’d never tried to use it—not because they were that bad at technology, but because the news tended to put both of them on edge.
Steve moved the eggs around with a spatula. Scrambled. He and Steve both knew he preferred over-easy, but they also knew that if Steve had to cut it into bite-sized pieces so that a one-armed Bucky could stab them with a fork, it would piss Bucky off. At least this way, they could pretend everything was normal.
Steve glanced over his shoulder from the stove, saying, “Tony will come around.”
Bucky closed his eyes, taking the longest, deepest breath of his life. If Steve kept talking, he might actually punch him. Tony was not going to come around. Nor should he.
And then Bucky was doing it, breaking his number one rule: Don’t fucking think about Tony fucking Stark.
Last time they’d seen him, he’d discovered that Bucky had killed his entire family. And Steve hadn’t even told him about it, until Zemo forced it out of him. Zemo had no footage of the event—there wasn’t any—but Steve wasn’t one to lie when faced with direct, personal questions like that. Especially when he felt guilty about it. So of course he’d told Tony the truth (that Bucky was a complete monster) and then the two super-soldiers had beaten Tony up when he rightfully got mad about it. God, they were terrible.
If Tony didn’t hate him before, he hated him now. Bucky couldn’t even blame him. What Bucky did to his family? It was unforgivable. He certainly wouldn’t forgive Stark, if the roles were reversed. Bucky had taken everything from him. His parents, his wife, his child.
And that’s when Bucky realized.
The memory was fuzzy, of course—he’d been under orders, under a mental state that he wouldn’t wish on anybody. But now that he was forced to think about it—really think about it, rather than shoving the memory down before it could gut-punch him into the sun—he was sure of it. How had he not realized before?
Steve placed a plastic fork and paper plate in front of Bucky (real luxury, being on the run was), and scraped the scrambled eggs into it. Bucky must have been making a face—somewhere between relief and horror—because Steve asked, “What is it?”
Bucky barely moved, afraid to snuff out the fragile spark of hope that blossomed in his chest. “I never killed the baby,” he breathed.
“What?” Steve asked.
Bucky’s thoughts were already spiraling. If the kid wasn’t dead, then what happened to him? Bucky didn’t know what that green cube device did, how it had made the car and the rain disappear. What if normal people couldn’t withstand it? Bucky was enhanced, and it had given him a serious headache. The shock of whatever happened might have killed the kid—melted his brain from the inside. Maybe it didn’t even matter that Bucky’d never laid a hand on that baby—he’d killed him anyway.
Or worse: the baby had survived, and Bucky had left him there. Alone, by an abandoned road, in the middle of the night. Not even on the road. Several dozen feet away, where it was unlikely anyone would spot him. Bucky put his hand to his forehead, pressing his knuckle hard into the bridge of his nose. Did Bucky actually leave a literal four-month-old baby to starve to death?
“What are you talking about?” Steve pressed, leaning low over the counter to try and get Bucky’s attention. “Buck, talk to me.”
Or… or had someone found the kid? Bucky didn’t dare entertain that thought. Didn’t dare touch it with a twelve-foot pole, but it popped into his head all the same. Could he still be… alive?
“I—the kid,” Bucky said, eyes wide. He met Steve’s concerned gaze for just an instant, then stared down at the table, eggs completely forgotten. “The Stark kid. I never killed him.”
“Pierre?” Steve clarified.
It was a stupid question, even if Bucky was paying enough attention to answer it. He did the math. The kid would be twenty-five now. He’d be—considering he was a Stark—working on some incredible engineering PhD, building a life for himself, maybe even with a wife of his own. Or maybe he was put in the foster system, forgotten, with no idea of his lineage, no idea that he might have been the next owner of Stark Industries.
Bucky’s chest constricted. For once, it wasn’t because of fear. It wasn’t because of worry, or worry about Steve’s worry. It was because of hope.
Finding his kid wouldn’t make it up to Tony. It wouldn’t make up for all the blood on Bucky’s hands. Not even close. But for the first time since he’d fallen into that ravine, Bucky felt like he could actually do something.
“I need to find him,” Bucky whispered.
Steve rounded the counter, easily lifting Bucky’s stool and turning it, so that they were sitting face-to-face. Bucky often forgot how strong Steve was now.
“You’re telling me the Stark baby survived?” Steve asked, still playing catch-up.
“Maybe,” Bucky said, and it sounded stupid, even to him.
It was dangerous. Insane. Bucky should absolutely not be pouring his entire heart, his entire soul, into a tiny, stupid maybe. There was no guarantee that the kid survived. The chances of it were next to zero.
Steve’s eyes were piercing steel. “What do you mean? Did he live or not?”
“He was alive when I left.” Bucky explained. His voice was gruff, low. “At least, I think so. I remember… he was there, on the ground. Unconscious, but not… at least, I don’t think…”
“Buck.” Steve’s expression went from confusion to something much, much worse. His frown deepened, pity filling the lines of his face.
Bucky realized how he sounded. A brainwashed super soldier, coming to terms with all the horrors he’d committed, trying desperately to take them back. Grasping at any tiny proof that maybe he wasn’t completely irredeemable, that maybe he’d left one of them alive.
“You think I’m lying?” Bucky fumed, holding Steve’s gaze with cutting intensity. Did Steve really think he was that desperate, that he’d make up something like this, just to make himself feel better?
“No, of course not,” Steve backtracked. “I just—I don’t think… I mean, memories, they’re not always the most… stable.”
Steve stopped himself, rubbing the back of his neck. He was clearly trying to tread lightly. Bucky hated it. He hated that Steve Rogers, the stick-thin kid who Bucky had saved from bullies more times than he could count, was treating him like the fragile one.
“It’s unlikely,” Steve finished. “That he’s still alive. Even if your memory is correct… I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
The worst thing? Steve was right. This was going to crush Bucky if it didn’t work. When it didn’t work. He knew that, as much as Steve thought he didn’t. But the spark was already a flame. Already a blazing fire, consuming every piece of kindling that Bucky tried to hold back.
🕸
Steve told him not to do it. Probably a thousand times. Bucky didn’t care.
The first idea was for Bucky to sneak out, but Steve was too smart for that. He was already suspicious, and he’d probably stay up all night making sure Bucky didn’t go anywhere. Besides, there was no chance Bucky could be quiet enough to climb out the window with Steve’s enhanced hearing. So he just let Steve come with him.
Bucky put on as many layers as he could, covering his choppy hair with a beanie and wearing a cheap black face mask. Steve wore a matching mask, as well as a black turtleneck and sunglasses, despite the fact that they left the apartment long after midnight.
They stayed inside as much as possible—only leaving for groceries, and only at night, and only alone. The two of them were only out of the house together for the risky-inbetweens when they moved cities.
Their disguises were pretty much nullified when they were together, because, seriously? Who else could it be, if you saw two impossibly-jacked dudes walking around in the state neighboring New York, one cropped blond and the other missing an arm? It was like they were wearing big signs with arrows, red text flashing EX-AVENGERS.
They walked for more than an hour, sticking to back streets, and didn’t pass many people. Thankfully, no one recognized them—not that they noticed, at least. The winter cold made Bucky’s fingers numb. It was early morning on December 10th—and they’d already seen a few flurries of snow this month—but the night was clear, lit above by a waning moon.
Bucky waited until they were in a secluded alleyway before lowering his mask, and activating the burner phone. They didn’t have Stark’s number anymore—he’d changed it after Siberia—but they did have the second-best thing.
“Who is this?” the speaker said, a light female voice.
“FRIDAY,” Bucky said, “put me through to Happy, please.”
The AI, not missing a beat, replied, “Sergeant Barnes. Alias: Bitchface. Please state your reason for calling.”
Bucky had no doubt that FRIDAY was tracking the phone as they spoke. She was probably alerting Tony, maybe even playing the conversation for him live, though Bucky doubted that he would want to hear anything they had to say.
“Pierre Stark,” Bucky said. “There’s a chance that he’s alive.”
This made the AI pause, and Bucky could practically hear her hard-drive whirring. Did hard-drives still do that?
Finally, she answered, “Happy will grant you five minutes.”
A moment passed before Happy’s voice came through the speaker, crackly and somewhat annoyed. “This better be good.”
“You think we’d risk coming out of hiding if it wasn’t?” Steve retorted.
“Great, Cap’s there too,” Happy said. “Tell me what’s going on before I hang up, track this line, and turn you in to the authorities.” He might have been bluffing, but they couldn’t take the chance.
“Steve Rogers,” FRIDAY added calmly. “Alias: Dickbutt.”
Steve winced at the nickname. Or maybe Happy’s tone.
“I didn’t understand the memory until recently,” Bucky said quickly. In truth, there was a lot he still didn’t understand—like the cube device, and whatever the scientists had been talking about before he went under—but those were unrelated. “The Starks—I never… Pierre was alive when I left. Someone might have found him.”
The heavy silence on the line acted like a magnet, drawing both Bucky and Steve closer to where Bucky held the phone between them. Now that neither of them were speaking, Bucky realized how quiet the alleyway was. It was just them and the moon.
Happy’s voice was the opposite of his name as he said, “FRIDAY is showing me the police report. It says that they recovered Pierre’s body.”
“They did?” Bucky asked, heart sinking. He’d been wrong. The baby had died from the cube device, after all. Whatever it was.
“Yeah, he was found strapped in a car seat in the back. He was killed on impact.”
Bucky frowned, mind racing. That couldn’t be right.
Steve gave Bucky a look, the creased-eyes kind of look that told Bucky he was on Happy’s side. Even if Steve had believed him at one point, that hope was gone now.
“Look, I don’t know what game you’re playing here,” Happy said with a sigh, “but even if you are actually just trying to help, you need to give it up. This kind of thing? It’s only going to hurt Tony more. He’s already grieved, and you opened that wound again with the whole thing in Siberia. Don’t make it even worse.”
Bucky swallowed thickly. He noted distantly that FRIDAY probably wasn’t playing the phone call for Tony, not if Happy was saying this. The thing is, Bucky had already thought about the risk of stirring up Tony’s grief, long before they’d left the apartment to make the phone call. Of course he didn’t want to hurt Tony—not any more than he already had.
But none of that mattered now. Not now that Bucky knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the kid had survived.
Memories could easily be erased, but putting new ones in—sharp ones—was much more difficult. Bucky was used to that feeling, that fuzziness that just wouldn’t focus, no matter how hard you tried. He had more bullshit in his head than anyone.
He played the moment again behind his eyes. Tony’s wife, June, fumbling with the other door, Bucky climbing onto the leather seats to reach her. The baby in her arms. Bucky’s hair dripping red onto the cloth in her lap. The details were too specific for the memory to be fabricated. In fact, there were just too many details. If there had been a car seat like in the report, Bucky would’ve had to go around to the other door to reach her, the one that was jammed. And what could explain that moment—those wide brown eyes staring up at him—if the baby was killed on impact? Nobody could’ve put something that clear into his head.
“Happy, listen to me,” Bucky said with urgency. He’d already lost Steve, and he sensed he was losing the other man too. He needed to talk fast, before Happy hung up. “There was never a car seat. The report was forged—at least, some of it was. Someone put that detail in there. Someone who wasn’t there, who didn’t know there wasn’t a car seat.”
Steve’s eyes widened, and Bucky couldn’t tell if he believed him, or if he was just coming to the conclusion that Bucky really was crazy after all. Or maybe it was just that Bucky had never been this animated since he’d been captured by Hyrda—in fact, this was probably the most Bucky had talked in a single conversation since 1945.
“Someone—probably Hydra—wanted it to look like the kid died,” Bucky continued, undeterred. “That means he didn’t. He’s alive.” Well, he might not be alive anymore, twenty-five years later, but at the very least, he’d survived the attack. This was proof. And now, Bucky was going to figure out where the hell he’d gone afterwards.
“Barnes—” Happy started, warning.
“Happy, I’m telling you. You need to put a reward out on him. Make it public. Get interviews, blood tests.”
Happy sighed, “They found his body, Barnes. I was there at the burial.”
“It was someone else,” Bucky insisted, his stomach lurching at the thought that someone had put a different baby into that casket.
“Buck,” Steve said, pulling on his sleeve. “We should go.”
Happy and FRIDAY wouldn’t be the only ones tracking their location. If they stayed too long, someone else might get hold of the line, and then the real guns would show up. The kind that would get them locked in a bunker. Bucky wasn’t even sure that the US government would stop there. Maybe they’d just execute them. Maybe Ross would pull the trigger himself.
“Please,” Bucky said, and god, did he hate the way he sounded when he said it. Weak, human, not at all like the asset he was trained to be. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I know what I saw. If there’s even the smallest chance you could return Tony’s son to him, wouldn’t you take it?”
Happy didn’t even sound angry, just tired, numb. “Not at the cost of his well-being. Not when the chance is this small.”
“He’s already dealing with the grief all over again,” Bucky growled. “You said it yourself! Might as well do the search now, instead of—”
The phone beeped, signaling that Happy had hung up. There was no need to destroy the phone; Bucky did a great job of that himself, by throwing it at full strength into the wall. It shattered into pieces of plastic and tech.
Steve was smart enough not to put a hand on Bucky’s back, this time, which he appreciated. He just followed as Bucky stormed out of the alley.
“Buck,” he said gently.
“No,” Bucky snapped.
Steve trotted to catch up with him, falling by his side. They walked briskly down a few city streets, taking random lefts and rights to lose anyone that might be following. Only once they were sure that no one tailed them would they head back to the apartment. Then they’d definitely have to lay low. Get out of Boston quick.
Bucky thought he was finally getting some good luck—that Steve would just shut the fuck up for once—but Steve had never been one to back down.
“I believe you,” Steve started, and Bucky hid the wobble of relief in his step. Steve must have been so shocked at Bucky’s rambling that it knocked some sense into him. “I just… are you sure this is what you need right now? Even if the kid is alive, all these years later, what makes you think you can find him? What makes you think he even wants to be found?”
Bucky turned away, squeezing his fist so tight that he wondered if he was capable of breaking his own fingers. A block passed before he could get his voice to work properly. “I need to find him.”
Steve thought this over. Gently, he asked, “Don’t you think you’ve lived in the past long enough?”
Bucky glanced over at him. “What?”
“I mean, if he’s still around, it would be great to find him,” Steve said. “But he’d be an adult already. He doesn’t need a father anymore. And… it’s not your job to reunite them.”
Clearly, Steve didn’t understand that it was certainly, definitely, undeniably his job to reunite them. He didn’t expect Tony to forgive him. The kid either. It wasn’t about that. It was about making wrongs right. If anyone should understand that, it was Captain America.
Steve continued, “You deserve time to heal from what happened to you. The past has been holding you back for the better part of a century. I just… I won’t stand seeing you jump right back into that past again, not when you finally have the chance to move on. Not when we finally…”
The unspoken lingered. Not when we finally found each other again. Not when we finally have a chance for a future.
Bucky’s throat dried up. Would looking for this kid disappoint Steve? Would it get in the way of what Steve wanted? Would it get in the way of Bucky’s healing?
Or was it the only way he could heal?
They were almost to the apartment by the time Bucky pieced together what he wanted to say. “I don’t know what happened to the kid. I don’t know if he’s still alive. But I do know that if I don’t try to find out, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Steve hesitated, opening his mouth. Before he could speak, Bucky continued, “I finally have a chance to do something right. Please, let me take it.”
Steve closed his mouth, frowning, like he didn’t like it. Then he nodded. Once, jerky. “Okay.” Then again, maybe to himself, “Okay.”
🕸
It was five in the morning when Tony got the call. He hadn’t been sleeping—he rarely was—so it caught him in the lab.
He’d been tweaking one of the calibrators for the Mark XLVII, which worked well enough when Tony was inside it, but the left foot’s repulsor buffered sometimes when piloting it remotely.
It was the suit that had been serving him since his previous one had been obliterated by a certain headache-inducing duo of Brooklyn super-soldiers. The wound there was a little too fresh for Tony’s liking, and the W in wound was deeply attracted to two other Ws, so to speak: whiskey, and the whetstone. And he’d given up drinking.
So it was while Tony had a giant metal boot on his lap, clanging an adjusted repulsor into the solid metal (not standard practice, but when had Tony ever been standard) that FRIDAY pushed over the first domino in a winding series of events that would define the rest of Tony’s life.
Of course, he didn’t know that, yet.
“You have an incoming call, Boss. Alias: Forehead of Security.”
Tony paused his hammering, wiping the sweat off of his brow. “Yeah, sure, why not.”
Happy’s oh-so-unhappy face lit up in the air, floating life-size above Tony’s desk. He eyed the boot in Tony’s lap. “I see I’m not waking you.”
“Yeah, there was a pea under my mattress,” Tony waved his hand impatiently. “What’s up? Someone drown your kitten?”
Happy frowned. “I don’t have a kitten.”
Tony had to give it to him—in all the years he’d known Happy, he’d never gotten less fun to mess with.
“Actually, I have something important to tell you,” Happy continued.
“This better not be about the donor thing on Saturday,” Tony groaned. “If I have to sign one more—”
“No, it’s—” Happy wet his lips nervously. “I sent you a file, okay? Read it.”
Pushing the heavy boot off his lap with a satisfying clang, Tony scooted his swivel chair towards the desk and clicked open his email. He drank from his coffee mug—though he couldn’t remember if this one was from today or yesterday, since he’d been here long enough that today’s would also be ice cold. Happy’s face minimized, moving out of the way of the projected screen, as a file opened.
The file.
Tony’s heart squeezed painfully, making it hard to breathe. “What is this?” he demanded.
He didn’t need to read it—he had the contents memorized. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget the first time he’d read this file, the way he’d scrambled to break into the police reports the moment he’d learned that everyone he loved most in the world had died, like this would somehow give him answers, bring his family back. Instead, he’d just found the grim reality. The long and lonely one.
“Look at the case logs,” Happy responded gently.
While Tony knew Happy wouldn’t play some kind of sick joke on him, it certainly felt like one. What the hell were they supposed to find in the case logs? Still, he typed a few commands, bringing up the editing history. They couldn’t see the actual contents of what was edited, but it listed time stamps for every time something was altered, and who edited it.
The report had been filed by the officer who’d found the scene—Charles Miller—who Tony had never gotten a chance to speak to in person. He’d been called to another location, or something—Tony couldn’t really remember, or bring himself to care, and besides, he’d had much bigger things to worry about at the time.
All of the edits had been made by Miller, around 1AM, which was just after the car had been found. Clearly, the file had been autosaving while Miller typed up his report. But the final edit was made several hours later, around 7AM. Which, if Tony was remembering correctly, was before Tony managed to break into the file. His hacking ability hadn’t been as good twenty-five years ago as it was now.
Tony stared at the logs, too sleep deprived to put this together. “I don’t get it.” It was a rare admission for him.
“Well, it’s just…” Happy hesitated. “According to the records FRIDAY found, Charles Miller was declared dead at 5:32AM that morning. Overdose.”
Tony paused. “Wait, what?”
That was over an hour before the final edit had been made. Which meant… Had someone else used his credentials to change the file?
“How did we not hear about this?” Tony asked, scrolling up and down as if more information would fall out somehow.
Happy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but… it seems like his death was pretty well covered-up. Someone didn’t want that information getting out.”
The cogs in Tony’s head were already turning. If that was true… Someone had wanted to obscure the information in the file. They’d killed Charles Miller—the only person who had seen the crash first-hand—so that nobody would know what they’d changed, and then used his credentials so that the edits couldn’t be traced back to them.
But what had they edited? What was so important to hide from the world that someone had been murdered over it?
Tony already knew that the crash hadn’t been an accident. He’d learned as much a few months ago when he’d found out that the Winter Soldier had killed them. So was it just that? Something that Tony already knew about?
Or was it something bigger? Something worse? Tony refused to believe that. He didn’t think he could handle it. And besides, what else could it be? It was probably covering up for a mistake Bucky had made, removing evidence to make sure that his family’s murder couldn’t be traced back to Hydra. That certainly made the most sense.
“How did you figure this out?” Tony asked.
Happy winced. “Sensitive subject. But you can trust my source.” He paused. “I think. I mean—the time stamps are evidence enough that something happened. But I just… I don’t want you to get your hopes up that this might uncover something. I just thought you’d want to know.”
Tony nodded. Happy was right—that this was probably nothing—and Tony wasn’t worried about something silly like hope. He’d given up that kind of thing a long time ago. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to joke it off as he mumbled, “Thanks.”
There was no way of knowing for sure unless they could find the original file. FRIDAY would have to comb old servers for a copy of it, and that was assuming that it hadn’t been completely wiped from existence. Finding it might be impossible, for all they knew. But it might still be out there.
Suit forgotten for the moment, Tony took another long sip of his freezing coffee as he pulled up three different monitors at once. “FRIDAY, start searching,” he said. “If that file exists, I want to know what was on it.”
🕸
After essentially shooting a flare into the sky with that phone call, Bucky and Steve would need to leave again. It was quick packing. They had a backpack each with their clothes, toiletries, and essentials, and shared an over-the-shoulder bag of food. When they got to a new place they’d buy more, but this way they at least had a few days’ worth in case they got caught somewhere.
The keys rattled as Steve locked up the apartment for the last time. They’d barely been there for a week, yet it always felt strange to leave a place behind, knowing they’d never see it again.
In Bucky’s chest, a feeling danced, both familiar and immensely foreign. He used to feel like this a lot, before Hydra. He realized with a pang that the feeling was excitement. Determination. Bucky had forgotten that he could feel this way: a motivation that came from within, rather than being pounded onto him blindly from above.
“Where to next?” Steve asked.
Bucky’s smile widened, imagining how much Steve was going to dislike his answer. “New York City.”
If there was even the slightest, most miniscule chance that this kid was alive, Bucky was going to find him.