Chapter Text
A few short weeks after his return to New York from Wakanda, Fury had appeared on his doorstep like a bad omen.
With a new arm and a freshly clear mind thanks to Shuri, he had moved into a modest apartment in Brooklyn with Steve, his amnesty and that of all Steve’s friends who found themselves in the Raft now secured, thanks to a newly established SHIELD legal team. As Bucky’s memories began to return to him in more frequent bursts, he and Steve had fallen back into the easy camaraderie of their pre-war apartment – the last real home they had.
Sam had moved to New York too, and had settled a few blocks away, close enough for his daily runs with Steve and to continue volunteering at the local VA. While Sam and Steve focused on working with Fury to rebuild SHIELD from the ground up, HYDRA now supposedly purged from its ranks, Bucky had been tasked with focusing on his own recovery. He had yet to figure out what ‘focusing on his recovery’ actually meant, but it seemed to involve an awful lot of recounting the worst of what HYDRA did to him to strangers with too many degrees on their wall. It had yet to provide any concrete results for him either, such as easing the constant, soul-crushing guilt that weighed down on him or allowing him to sleep more than a few hours a night, but the proud smile on Steve’s face whenever he returned from a therapy session made it all worth it.
In a lot of ways, it was familiar: waking up with Steve only a few rooms away; falling asleep knowing someone was watching his six; reading on the couch and listening to the sound of Steve’s pencil against his sketch book. Longing to curl into Steve’s arms, or follow him into bed and pull the covers over both of them to block out the rest of the world.
Resisting those urges for the sake of their friendship, and to make sure he never, ever had to see rejection or disgust in those ocean blue eyes.
Life in their little apartment sometimes felt like an echo of the memories he had recovered, from before. In those brief moments, he could forget the war and ice and death that had separated them for so long, and pretend he and Steve were still back in their shitty Brooklyn apartment, never to be parted.
But outside of those bubbles of nostalgia was an almost entirely unfamiliar world. The sounds and smells of the city were different, and he was trying to catch up with a whole new world of technology – if it couldn’t be used to kill someone, HYDRA hadn’t bother to teach it to him. While his relationship with Steve was strong, and growing stronger as his memories of their lives together slowly returned to him, there were differences there, too. Before, Bucky had always been the one with the big family and large friend group. Now, he relied on Steve entirely, much like Steve had once relied on him when he was small and sick. It was Steve, now, with connections and relationships – Sam, Natasha, Clint, Wanda, Thor -
They don’t discuss Tony. The knowledge that it was Bucky who had driven a wedge between Tony and Steve; who had forced Steve to nearly kill his friend; who had murdered Howard, their friend, was nearly too much for him to bear.
He had barely begun settling into this new, unfamiliar New York when Fury had showed up unannounced on their doorstep, manilla folder with ‘CLASSIFIED’ stamped across it in hand. When Bucky had ducked into the other room to give Fury and Steve some privacy, a deep voice had stopped him in his tracks.
“Not so fast, Barnes,” Fury had addressed him, leaning around Steve to meet Bucky’s eye with his own piercing gaze, “This one’s for you.”
Despite his reservations about trusting SHIELD, Bucky had accepted a solo mission from Fury to take out a small HYDRA cell that had recently reared its head in Alaska, and he and Steve had fought bitterly into the night about it. Steve had pleaded with him not to go; begging him to think about the disruption to his so-called ‘recovery’; to think about the danger of carrying out a mission solo; to see himself as something other than a weapon to be pointed at a target by others.
But Bucky’s desire to see HYDRA crushed beneath his heel had just about outweighed his distrust of Fury, and realistically, there was no one else who could complete the missions Fury brought to him like Bucky could.
A disciplined soldier like Sam didn’t have the aim of a marksman. A marksman like Clint didn’t have the strength of a super soldier. A super soldier like Steve didn’t have the stealth of an assassin. And an assassin like Natasha didn’t have the in-depth knowledge of HYDRA bases and operations that Bucky did.
Ignoring Steve’s reservations, and confident in his own abilities to carry off the mission, Bucky had taken out that first HYDRA cell with practised ease and more than a little genuine pleasure. He had agreed to take on several more missions for Fury, but had stopped short of allowing himself to become a SHIELD agent.
He works for himself, now, and no one else.
After establishing a routine over the course of months – solo missions for Fury, trying to catch up on 70 years of popular culture, getting to know Sam for Steve’s sake, and suffering through therapy sessions – Bucky had not been surprised when he received a call from Fury, asking him to come into the new SHIELD offices.
He was surprised, however, when Fury asked him to bring Steve, too.
At the uncharacteristic urgency in Fury’s voice, Bucky had dragged Steve out of bed and onto his motorcycle, careful not to dwell on the feeling of Steve pressed up against his back, arms tight around his waist. They had joined Sam and Clint at the conference table as Fury had given them a disarmingly simple mission: infiltrate a possible HYDRA base that had recently come onto SHIELD’s radar.
“We’re picking up strange energy signals,” Fury had told them, frustratingly vague as usual, “I have people looking into it, but they’re not making much progress remotely. We need bodies on the ground to investigate.”
At that, Bucky had felt a stab of fear run through him – did he mean…? If he was forced to work with a man who wanted him dead, whose parents he had killed -
“People looking into it…” Steve had echoed, stiffening ever so slightly just as Bucky had, “Meaning Stark?”
To Bucky’s immense relief, Fury had shaken his head, speaking directly to Steve as if Bucky wasn’t even there.
“He’s still not willing to work with Barnes, and honestly, Barnes’ insight into HYDRA makes him a more valuable asset than Stark right now.”
Bucky had barely suppressed his flinch at being referred to as an ‘Asset’, and Steve’s hands had balled into fists at his sides, but Fury had continued as if nothing was amiss.
“If you can’t find anything, we’ll have to bring him in. But for now, you’re on your own.”
“Natasha?” Clint had asked, but Fury had shook his head once again,
“Natasha, Wanda and Scott are tied up in Bucharest. Thor is off-world, Banner is off the grid. But you shouldn’t need them. This is a simple, in-and-out job,” Fury had assured them, meeting each of their eyes in turn and receiving terse nods in response.
Simple, Bucky thought to himself, mindlessly flicking through the pages of the mission file as preparations carried on around him, why does everything always go to shit when they tell you it’ll be simple?