the more you say the less i know (wherever you stray, i follow)

by notcaycepollard

Summary:

It starts in the desert.

It starts in the desert.

Sam and Riley are out on scout duty when the commander calls them into his office. “Got a mission for you boys,” he says. “Something a little different from the usual.”

A little different is an understatement, Sam thinks privately once he understands the specs and parameters of their mission briefing. A troop drop, except that instead of flying a chopper with a squad of guys ready to parachute in it's very literally a drop, one soldier, no chopper, just Sam with this guy harnessed to him and Riley flying point.

“Bet you're glad I forced you not to skip arm day,” Riley teases while they're trying to figure out how the fuck Sam's supposed to fly with an additional two hundred pounds of deadweight human soldier strapped to his wing harness.

“Man, you're full of shit, you know I bench more than you,” Sam says. Frowns at his calculations. “Does this guy have metal bones, or something? I swear none of this is adding up, he should tip out at one seventy max, I dunno where the extra weight is coming from.”

Riley shrugs. “Special ops,” he says, as if that explains anything. “Probably has weapons in places we don't even know about. You saying you can't do it?”

“No,” Sam says, scowling. Refusing to rise to Riley's bait. “Just figuring out how much extra fuel I gotta account for, that's all. Anyway, we’re special ops, don’t sell us short just ‘cause someone else is even higher up in need-to-know bullshit than we are.”

Meeting the guy doesn’t give Sam any more clarity on why he’s supposedly such a tank. Yeah, okay, Sam’s got eyes, he’s six-one in combat boots, head-to-toe in black tac gear that looks more like goth designer motorcycle leather than standard-issue special ops shit, and on top of that his hair is longer than regulation, pulled back in a messy bun at the nape of his neck. Jesus Christ, Sam thinks, trying to get his shit together.

“I saw that,” Riley says slyly, nudging Sam’s shoulder—as if he can talk, given how close he’s flown to the sun on DADT—and Sam shrugs it off, re-checks his wing harness.

“You good to go? I’m not getting any younger here.”

“Whenever you are,” Riley says, still looking like he’s gonna give Sam shit at the earliest opportunity, so Sam doesn’t give him the chance. Nods, once, and glances at the horizon, tilts his head.

“See you up there,” he says, and maybe Riley sees through it—so sue him, Sam doesn’t want an audience while he gets this guy harnessed closer than is gonna be comfortable for either of them—but he just nods back at Sam, pulls on his goggles, lifts easy and practised into the hot Afghanistan sky. 

No point fucking around any more, Sam figures, might as well get to the task at hand. “Hey, man,” he says. “Sam Wilson, 58th Pararescue. I’m gonna be your ride out today.” The soldier has a face mask already fitted, something Sam assumes is special ops nonsense desert gear complete with particulate filtration and air vents, so he can’t read the guy’s facial expression but steps in closer anyway. “You ready? I’ve done this a couple times before, so just follow my lead.”

“You’ve done this before,” the soldier says, quiet, as Sam begins to clip them together. “With me? I don’t remember.” 

“Nah, man, not with you. Honestly, usually it’s the other way around. Airlifting someone out, not dropping them in. And usually they’re unconscious, which you’d think makes it harder but it’s actually a lot easier when I don’t have someone moving around on the line, so I’m gonna need you to just hold on and hold still, okay?”

“Yes,” the soldier says. “I can do that,” and reaches for his own goggles. Makes eye contact briefly with Sam before he slides them on: gray eyes, the color of a clear fall sky, and Sam kind of wishes he knew what he looked like under the mask.

 

The drop goes fine; Sam figures that’s all there is to it, although a couple days later someone new shows up in camp, someone who walks and talks like a special ops commander or maybe something even more classified. Black ops, covert, Sam's not sure, but he gets the impression that he’s pissed about the way their squad commander handled that soldier. There’s a lot of yelling, and then more uncomfortable silence, and when Sam’s called into the command tent he hears what must be the end of the argument: the orders were to drop him in alone, no assist, what part of that was unclear? Do fucking better this time or we’ll fix the situation for you.

“Wilson,” the commander says, as the other guy lets himself out. “Johnson. At ease, soldiers, pull up a seat. Intel just came in on Khalid Khandil’s whereabouts, we’ve got an opportunity to take him out.”

“Missile strike, sir?” Sam asks, and the commander shakes his head, pushes the intel folder across the table.

“Exfiltration,” he says. “We play things right, we can apprehend him alive, airlift him out to custody.”

“It’s gonna be a pain in the ass,” Riley says, studying the intel. “Says here, Bakhmala’s a no-go for helicopters, they’re deploying RPGs from the ground. Why aren’t we just bombing, if we got a line on location?”

“Brass wants him alive for interrogation,” the CO says. “Didn’t ask why, but go ahead, be my guest, you want to get charged with insubordination today?”

“Nosir, nobody’s saying that,” Riley says, clearly taken aback. “Just wanted to be clear on our options, that’s all.”

“This one’s come down from above,” the commander tells him. “So I wouldn’t go asking too many questions, Johnson. You saying you can’t get it done?”

“It’s doable,” Riley says. “Not saying it’s not, you know I’m not scared of an RPG. Me and Sam, we’re pretty good at dodging that shit by now. Right, Wilson?”

“We didn't get a brief on exfil,” Sam says. “For that other guy, the drop a couple days ago. Won't he need us on that? Just saying, if we're planning the next mission, we gotta factor in a twenty-four hour recharge time for the wing packs.”

“Don't worry about that,” the commander says, “no extraction needed, it's covered.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “okay,” and turns his attention to the Khalid Khandil brief, the limited information they've been able to gather that might provide useful.

They didn't say what the extraction was, Sam thinks later, and can't quite forget about it. Special ops dick-swinging, Riley would say; you know another unit wouldn't tell you the plan even if it ain't classified, they're dicks like that. Love to gatekeep info just to feel like they got one-up on you. And he's not wrong—if it's not need-to-know for Sam's mission parameters then he doesn't need to know, they don't gotta tell him about some squad liaison for a soldier that ain't even his unit—but even so, it bugs him.

 

The Khalid Khandil mission is a shitshow. 

If Sam didn't know better, didn't trust his SOs to have his back, he'd say they'd gotten bad information. Not just wrong but deliberately and maliciously wrong, the kind of shit that everyone's learned by now is a trap for dumb American soldiers. They weren’t wrong about the RPGs; the sky is thick with them, worse than it's ever been before, and Riley wasn't wrong either. He and Sam aren't afraid of an RPG, have a solid amount of experience with navigating the EXO-7 sets by now, but the wings aren't made to resist ballistic impact; all they've got is kevlar and carbon fiber body armor and a little more maneuverability than the enemy expects.

“Christ,” Riley says, “Jesus Christ, Sam, this is some heavy fire, you doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, dodging another explosion, “can't see shit, though. Is your night vision working?”

“It's ‘cause you don't eat your carrots, man, bet you regret tossing your veggie omelette every time you pull the short straw.”

“Fuck you,” Sam mutters, laughing even as another bomb misses him by bare yards. “There's what, like, half a square inch of carrot in that thing?”

“I'll ask my mom to send over her carrot cake loaf in the next care package,” Riley continues. “She can't bake for shit, you'll have to choke it down, but I know you'll do it if it makes my mom happy, right?”

“You are so full of shit. I've had your mom's baking, it's great.”

“Sure, if all you're eating otherwise is the shit they're serving in mess.”

“Tell your mom her kid is ungrateful,” Sam says. “On your left, man, look out.”

“Yeah, yeah, I see it. Telling me how to fly, Wilson? You know who passed the EXO tests first, man, it wasn't—”

His line goes dead; Sam pulls a tight barrel roll, searches frantically in his field of vision for the outline of Riley's wings. “Riley,” he says, “Riley, come on, come in, are you—Riley, are you reading me,” and then an explosion lights up the sky. Silhouettes a limp body spinning in the air, out of control, one wing ripped clean off and the other one on fire. He's too far to reach; Sam knows that, but he pushes himself down anyway, pushes so hard and so fast that the G-force makes his eyes water. “Come on, man,” he says, desperate, but Riley's line is still dead and he's plummeting, spinning faster, falling out of the sky like he'd never been the first to pass the flight tests, first to make the PJ unit, first to grin at Sam, eyes bright, and say oh, an experimental jet-propulsion wing-pack, sure, how hard can it be?

Sam is screaming, eyes blurring with tears, and then there's a shock of impact to his shoulder, a force that spins him backward out of his flight path. Gunfire: he's gotten too close to ground, put himself in range for a lucky shot, and through the roaring in his ears he hears the crackle of more guns going off, a firefight that'll kill him too if he doesn't get out of range fast. Shots hit his wings, too glancing to do any real damage, and then more direct hits. Alarms screaming at him, pull up, pull up, power supply failure, location tracking failure, vitals failure, critical failure, abort mission—

 

Sam lands heavily, staggers into the sand to stop himself falling face-down. He's got no idea where he is, which way is home; hours until sunrise, and his power's dead, no tracking, nothing to direct his way. He folds in his wing-pack, struggles out of it to take a look, but it's too dark to see anything that might be easily fixed.

“Fuck,” he whispers. Voice raw, throat aching; Riley— “Fuck. Okay, Sam. Come on. Just fucking—”

You know I can smell my way home? Riley says, joking and easy. When Matthews is on sentry duty, anyway. It's that fucking cologne he wears, I can smell it two hundred miles away. It fucking carries.

Riley's not here; Riley's somewhere in the desert, somewhere alone, and Sam should be with him but he's alone too, lost and directionless with not even Matthews and his disgusting aftershave to guide the way home.

“Fuck,” Sam mutters again, and starts walking.

 

He still has no bearing an hour later, but at least the sun is rising: east on his left, so he's been a few degrees off the direction of base. Must have gotten further off-course than he thought, and besides it took them a couple hours just to get to Bakhmala so he's got a long hike ahead of him.

When someone calls out, he startles; blinks awake, squints into the rising dawn to see who it might be. If it was an ambush he'd already be dead, reflexes gone and shock setting in right alongside the exhaustion, so he just stops where he is, waits for them to draw closer.

It's a young woman, a villager in cotton robes and hijab, and Sam holds still, not sure whether he should speak.

“You are looking for your friend?” the woman asks, shading her face so she can look at him, and for a second all that Sam can think is Riley—he made it—he got to the ground somehow— before his brain catches up with him and he realizes who she must be speaking about.

“My friend,” he says, “yeah, yes, you—you know where he is? You saw where he went?”

Through her broken English and Sam's worse Pashto he understands what happened: the soldier struggling into the outskirts of their village, half-dead from blood loss, delirious with thirst and sunstroke.

“He hit his head,” she tells him. “He doesn't understand where he is. I think, perhaps, he has forgotten who he is.”

 

The soldier is in a back room, a mattress on the floor and a folded blanket under his head. He's unconscious, motionless, more dead than alive; somewhere along the way he's lost the mask and goggles, and without it his face is younger than Sam was expecting. If Sam was gonna make a call, he thinks uncomfortably, looking at the waxy pallor of his skin, the dried blood in his hair and blood-stained clothes, he'd say this guy wasn't likely to make it.

“Has he woken up at all?”

“One time,” the woman tells him. “He was confused. We give him water, bread, but…”

His eyes were wrong, she tells him. Pupils so large they could hardly see the ring of blue for the black, and not focused on anything. Couldn't look at the daylight. Got sick after eating, couldn't keep anything down. Couldn't answer questions: who he was, where he'd come from. What'd brought him half-dead into their village.

Severe TBI, Sam thinks. Abnormal pupil dilation, confusion, nausea and vomiting. Light sensitivity. Long periods of unconsciousness. A long-ass time in some VA hospital, and if he's lucky he might learn how to walk again but Sam's seen enough head injuries now not to hold his breath. “And the blood, was that just from his head?”

“No,” she says, “no,” and then ducks her head, acknowledges the older man who's just entered. “Uncle,” she says, “this man has come to find his friend.”

“Hello,” Sam says. Bows his head in respect. “My name is Sam Wilson. I'm a pararescue in the US Air Force.”

“Greetings, Sam Wilson. I am Abdul Sayeed.”

“My uncle is the headman of this village,” the woman tells him. “His English is better. He will tell you more about your friend.”

“Thank you,” Sam says, “thank you,” and waits for her to leave, for Abdul to gesture that they should sit.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? We can bring you tea, bread, my wife will cook.”

“That's fine,” Sam says, although he's so exhausted he can't decide whether food or rest would be better right now. “Just some water, if that's okay. And…can you tell me anything else about my friend? Is that blood just from his head, or—”

“We found this on him,” the headman says. Hands Sam a piece of broken metal: a tracking chip, small enough to embed under fabric or skin. “I think he cut it out of himself. Just here,” and he taps two fingers against the side of his throat, an inch below the jaw. “He nicked his jugular artery. That's what almost killed him. If I were guessing, I would say it was put there to stop anyone removing it without risking death.”

Sam inspects the smashed tracking chip. Frowns. “He still had it on him? But nobody has shown up yet?”

“Clutched in his hand along with the shard of glass he used to cut it out,” Abdul shrugs. “I think he broke it before losing too much blood to continue. And then—I smashed it again. Just to be sure. My village does not need any more trouble.”

That reminds Sam; his wings have their own tracking chip, transponders that report his location and vital signs and power supply, so that he'd been able to see exactly where Riley was falling even as his heart rate had cut abruptly to nothing. Sam should have had his own response squad by now, 58th Pararescue coming to dig out one of their own.

“Sam Wilson,” Abdul says, uncomfortable but holding Sam's gaze. “You see his hand? His arm?”

Sam hadn’t, not in any detail that had stuck. He looks again, noticing now that the soldier’s outer layer of leather and kevlar has been peeled off, set down to the side. Underneath it he’s wearing an unremarkable black t-shirt, blood-stained like everything else, and his left arm is—

The soldier shifts in his sleep. Flexes his metal hand, the tiny sound of servos whirring. Sam frowns. Looks back at Abdul, seeing his concern.

“Yes,” Abdul says. “You see. This is not a good man, I think. A dangerous man to know.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “you know, I'm getting that,” and feels himself sway with exhaustion, a crash of adrenaline so abrupt that his vision goes blurry for a minute as the wave of ignored pain crests over him.

“Are you well?” Abdul asks, and then, with greater alarm, “are you hurt, Sam Wilson?”

Yeah, Sam wants to say, yeah, I watched my best friend get shot out of the sky and it hurt so bad I didn't even think about the bullet in my own shoulder, but all he can manage is a slurred mumble before his vision blurs again, goes dark.

 

When Sam wakes up, head pounding with a dehydration headache and his whole body just one big world of pain, it takes him a minute to realize he's not alone in the dim little room.

“Welcome back,” someone says, and Sam blinks, sits up and regrets it immediately. Blinks again, clearing the tears that have sprung into his eyes at the sudden jolt from his shoulder. The soldier is sitting up on his mattress, eyes bright and intent in the half-darkness. Even in this light, Sam can see that he's better: no bandage on his throat, and although the wound is livid it's more like a weeks-old scar than two days fresh.

“Huh,” he says. “Hate to admit it, man, but I really thought you weren’t gonna make it. You got some kind of Wolverine healing superpowers, or something?”

The soldier blinks. “I don’t know what that means,” he says, voice rough. “It probably looked worse than it was. You know how head wounds bleed.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “but…” and shifts his weight until he can sit up without his shoulder screaming in pain. “I mean, it looked pretty bad. You looked pretty bad.”

“I’m okay,” the soldier shrugs. “Had worse. You get hit?”

“Lucky shot,” Sam says. “I guess they figured I was close enough to the ground to switch to assault rifles. Didn’t do much damage, though, I think my body armor caught the worst of it.” He probes at his shoulder, feeling for a wound, broken skin or bone fractures, and comes up with nothing: probably just soft-tissue damage, the kind that’ll ache for weeks longer than it should.

“You were the one who flew me in,” the soldier says abruptly. “You and your friend.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “Me and Riley, yeah.” That brings everything back; the thing he hasn’t let himself think about until now, and he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

“Your friend didn’t make it,” the soldier says, and Sam would wonder how he knows except that it’s probably clear in his face, the hitch of his breath, the way he can feel his jaw’s gone tight with everything he’s trying to keep under check.

“RPG knocked him out of the sky,” he says dully. “Nothing I could do. Felt like I was up there just to watch.”

“I’m sorry,” the soldier says, his gaze too intent for Sam to bear, and Sam turns his face away, wipes his palm over his eyes.

“Not your fault, man. Anyway, you got a name? Since it seems like we’re gonna be friends, and all.”

“Friends?” the soldier asks, looking confused for the first time, and Sam shrugs through the pain in his shoulder.

“They asked, you know, if I was your friend. Looking for you, you know? Figured it’d be easiest just to say yes.”

“Yes,” the soldier agrees. “I understand.”

“So,” Sam says, wondering if the guy’s head injury is kicking in after all. Reaches for the bottle of water next to his mattress. “Your name, brother?”

“James,” the soldier tells him. “My… my name is James. And you’re Sam.”

“Sam Wilson, yeah, that’s me.”

“The guy with wings,” James says, smiling just a little, and Sam almost chokes on his mouthful of water; that minute shift in expression, it’s like it’s suddenly enough to pull into clarity the sharp line of his jaw, his cheekbones, the sweet twist of his mouth. Fuck, he thinks, goddamnit, because this guy is definitely and without a doubt still a dangerous man to know but he’s also, undeniably, hot as goddamn fuck.

 

“You wanna tell me about the arm?” he says eventually, once he’s finished his water, and James blinks again. There are dark shadows under his eyes, the kind of bruised-looking smudges Sam feels personally lucky not to suffer through, and he thinks James must be tired after all, must be feeling the after-effects of a knock on the head and some emergency field self-surgery even if he does have some kind of superhuman healing ability. “Sorry, that’s rude, man. None of my business, really, I was just curious ‘cause I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prosthetic that advanced.”

“Advanced,” James says. “Yes. Yeah, it—it’s special. One of a kind, they told me.” Looks down at his hands, closes and opens his fist in a quiet whir of complex mechanics. Turns it palm-up, lays his hand down on his lap. “Sorry,” he adds, “I’m… not used to talking about it. About myself.”

Special ops as fuck, oh my god, Sam hears Riley say in the back of his mind, you sure know how to pick ‘em, Wilson, and he shakes his head, tries to clear it.

“I’m gonna,” he says, not sure what he’s about to say next—I’m gonna go find Abdul, gonna get something to eat, gonna wash my face and drink some tea and hope that I wake up back at base and this whole thing’s been one long bad dream—but before he can finish the sentence he sees his wing pack and armor in a neat pile by his feet.

“Oh yeah, I took a look before you woke up,” James says. “I hope you don’t mind. I was very careful.”

“No big deal,” Sam says, although he’s aware that James could be anyone, could be dangerous in ways he doesn’t even know about. Reaches for his wings, strokes his hand over them. They’re damaged, not functional but perhaps not hopeless; divots from bullet and shrapnel carved into the ribs of each wing, the flexible panels fractured or shattered, and when he gets to the vitals tracking transponders he realizes why nobody’s shown up yet. They’re broken beyond repair, must have taken a direct hit. As far as anyone’s concerned back at base, Sam’s a flatline, no signal; they’ll almost certainly assume the worst.

“What are they?” James asks, “prototype?” and Sam chews his lip, examines the shattered transponder chip for another couple seconds before replying.

“EXO-7 Falcon,” he says, deciding James is probably okay to hear some classified Air Force secrets. “A prototype, yeah. We used them for PJ missions, shit we couldn’t get helicopters into. Better than a parachute. I mean, you’ve seen how they work.”

“Impressive,” James says, as Sam reaches next for his body armor. It’s clear where he’d taken a bullet, a shot right into the cap of his shoulder; there’s a hole in the kevlar where it must have hit. Sam traces his fingers around the edge of it, thinks for another minute.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he says eventually. “And I’m pretty sure they said something about food before I passed out basically on top of your ass. You coming?”

“No,” James says, oddly hesitant. “I’ll. I’m fine. I need to sleep, that’s all.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” James says, touching the tips of his fingers to the folded blanket. Blinking again like he’s surprised by it, someone taking the time to make him comfortable. “Go and eat, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay.”

 

Abdul is in the next room; he must have heard at least some of their conversation, but he just nods at Sam, tilts his head to show that Sam should follow. The facilities are basic but nothing worse than Sam would have dealt with back at base; running water, anyway, and once he’s pissed for like a hundred years, scrubbed his hands and face with hard soap and cold water, he feels significantly more human.

“You’re hungry,” Abdul says. “Sit with me. We will eat.” He passes Sam tea, a bowl of lamb stew and rice; it’s generous, kinder than Sam expects, and it’s not like he hasn’t been here in Afghanistan for long enough to know that war is more complicated than anyone thinks back home, but even so, he’s taken aback.

“How is your friend?” Abdul asks, once Sam's drunk his tea, finished half his stew. Sam swallows. Wipes gravy from the corner of his mouth.

“Better,” he says. “Much better. I wasn’t… I was expecting worse, you know?”

“And you? You’re feeling better, also?”

“I think I was mostly just tired,” Sam admits. “I’m sore, my shoulder is going to give me trouble for the next month, but it wasn’t bad. Didn’t get me, not really.”

“You were lucky,” Abdul agrees. “I saw. Your armor protected you.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sam says. Pauses to eat another mouthful, to think about how he should phrase what he wants to ask. “Did you… were you the one who looked at it? Who cleaned me up?”

“Yes,” Abdul says. “I know what you’re asking, Sam Wilson. After we eat, I will show you.”

He’s true to his word, although he makes Sam eat another ladle of stew, drink another cup of tea, before he goes back to the subject. “You want to know what hit you,” he says, reaching into his pocket. “But I think you will not like what you learn. These aren't bullets from my country. I've seen them many times. Dug them out of my brothers’ wounds, when they've gotten between Americans and their targets. But not from this side of the war.”

When he hands Sam the mangled bullet Sam understands what he means. American ammunition, 7.62 NATO: standard rounds for anyone in special ops with a combat assault rifle. “I don't get it,” he says. “The Taliban are, what, getting weapons supplies from US armed forces? That doesn't make sense.”

“No,” the headman says, impatient. “I don't know everything about the mujahideen or the Taliban, al Qaeda, where they’re moving, but I know enough. There are no camps here. Not here, not Bakhmala, nothing in a hundred miles. You could not have found an enemy if you tried.”

“I—”

“You weren't shot down by al Qaeda,” James says abruptly, startling them both; Sam doesn't know how long he might have been awake, how much he's heard, but it's clear enough he's put more together than Sam. “You weren't attacked by terrorists or Afghan rebels. You were taken out by American soldiers.”

“Why would they—”

“They'll call it a friendly fire incident,” James continues. “You and your friend know about me. Knew about me. That couldn't be allowed to continue.”

“So, what, they just…”

“Shot you out of the sky,” James says, inflectionless. “Yeah. Easiest way to clean up a situation.”

What part of that was unclear? Sam hears, remembering: do fucking better this time or we’ll fix the situation for you.

“They killed Riley,” he says, struggling to believe it, to make it true in his own head. “RPGs against their own soldiers, and I—”

I was up there just to watch.

 

Sam might have sat in that room all night, American bullet gripped tight in his hand, but James seems to have been spurred to action. He leaves Sam for a few minutes, comes back with his own bowl of stew. Speaks to Abdul in Pashto too fast for Sam to follow, and after a moment of surprise there’s a rapid back-and-forth, a conversation that plays out at length before James says something final, puts his bowl down.

“Sam,” he says. “Sam. You with me?”

“I should,” Sam says, “I—I gotta figure out how to get back to base. To tell them about Riley, about…” Even as he says it, he catches himself: not an option. He still doesn’t want to accept it, to wonder if it was his own CO, his own unit that agreed to the mission, but looking at James’ expression, the words dry up in his mouth.

“We can't stay here,” James tells him. “And you can't go back.”

“I can't just—I got family, man. My mom, my sister.”

“Right now they think you're dead,” James says. “That keeps them safe. You show up, they'll stop at nothing to take you out before you can talk too much.”

“But—” Sam starts, and James reaches out, touches two fingers to Sam's wrist.

“I know,” he says. “I'm sorry. But we have to go.”

 

Sam can only take James’ lead, assume he has a plan. Whether he does, it's not clear; he's mapped a way out of Afghanistan, at least, but from there Sam's not so sure. Across the border and skirt around Quetta, down to Karachi and then a boat all the way to Mumbai; maybe that's enough of a plan to start with.

“I can show you the way into Pakistan,” Abdul says. “A path through the mountains, one that not so many people know. I can give you food for your journey. But you'll have to walk, and it will be a long way. And cold.”

It's not like Sam doesn't know cold, hasn't spent months deployed on missions that rely on special ops guys being way too macho to complain about being a little chilly, but his shoulder hurts, it’s been a long-ass forty-eight hours that started with a firefight and ended with Sam discovering he’s got a target on his back from his own goddamn country, and he’s just so fucking tired. James seems to realize that Sam is flagging. Slows his pace, falls into step.

“I think the cave we can rest in is close,” he says, instead of you okay? or hanging in there? or any of that kind of half-hearted bullshit Sam probably would have gone with. “Just past the summit, that’s what Abdul said.”

“Sure,” Sam says, too tired now to bother with anything else. James frowns for a minute.

“Be nice if you could just fly us out,” he says, voice low, rough, the only thing briefly betraying his own exhaustion, and Sam huffs a short laugh.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Would be, huh?” But James is right; they reach the cave after another half-hour of grinding uphill hike, and Sam shrugs out of his pack, collapses down next to it.

“Here,” James says, settling across from Sam, offering him a lamb kebab wrapped in naan, a handful of dried fruit. “Eat something before you pass out.”

The food is cold—no reason to build a fire, not when they've got shelter already—but it still tastes good, the meat spicy and tender. Sam chews for a minute, thoughtful. “When we get out of this,” he says through a mouthful, “you’re gonna tell me what makes you so special that people want to kill me just for knowing you exist.”

James looks at Sam a minute, face serious, his mouth a straight line. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “We get out of this, I'll tell you.”

“Until then, I guess I’m gonna get some sleep.”

“I’ll keep watch,” James says, finishing his own meal. “You’ll be warmer further back. Take the blanket.”

“Are you sure?” Sam asks, “is that necessary? It’s getting dark, we’re in the middle of nowhere, you really think anyone is following us this far?”

“I would,” James says, and Sam can’t really argue with that so he just tucks the blanket around his shoulders, shifts his pack a couple times until it’s slightly less lumpy, and tries to get some rest. When he wakes—more than a few hours later, judging by the light—James is still sitting just where he’d been, a still figure darkly outlined against the early dawn breaking.

 

“James,” Sam says a couple days later: increasingly concerned, even as it’s clear they’ve crossed into Pakistan, are on the right path to where they’re aiming for. They’re almost out of food, but he’s pretty sure they’ll make it far enough to find something, that’s not the issue here. “J, hold up. Have you slept at all, since we left? Like, even an hour? Every time we’ve stopped, you’ve told me to rest, you’ll take watch, but you’re gonna get sick if you keep going like this. Like, for starters, I’d be surprised if you don’t start seeing shit at the corner of your eyes, you know?”

“I’m okay,” James says, the same thing he’s said the whole way, and Sam shakes his head, touches James’ shoulder. Catches the way he startles.

“I’m pretty sure you’re not,” he says. “Come on, man. I need you to get me through this, but that means you gotta stay with me here.”

“I’m used to it,” James says. Chews his lip like he’s a little uncertain: white teeth, skin going pale and then flushed with the divot of toothmarks. “I got… they give me shit, to get through long missions. Keeps me going.”

“Give you what shit?” Sam asks, more concerned now, and James fumbles with one of the zippered pockets on his jacket, pulls out a blister pack. “Are you fucking kidding me, they give you meth? Amphetamines? Jesus Christ, you can’t just keep—okay, when did you take your last one?”

“This morning,” James tells him, eyes dark with fear or confusion: an emotion Sam can’t place. “I would have taken another one in an hour or two.”

“Okay, that’s—man, that’s fucked up, you don’t gotta keep doing that shit. Get some sleep, J, I’ll sit up. That’s an order.”

“Pretty sure you’re not my handler,” James says, that faint smile again, but Sam must have put enough weight into the words that James actually yawns, nods once. Takes the blanket. “Wake me in two hours,” he says, and kicks back, closes his eyes, demonstrates at least a pretence of sleep within minutes.

Jesus Christ, Sam thinks again; he’s not a fucking idiot, okay, he can see pretty clearly that something deeply weird is up with James and his whole situation by now. Heals too fast, keeps going for way too long. Doesn’t show pain, even though Sam’s pretty sure he must still be feeling it, and he’s pretty sure too that nobody in even the blackest of special ops calls their SO a handler. He sighs out loud. Looks down at James; in sleep, his face has relaxed, slackened, so that Sam can study more closely the softness of his mouth, the tender hollow of his throat still marked by that ragged scar. They’re both dirty, grimy from days of walking and sweating in the same clothes, and James’ hair is lank, stringy, his stubble grown out into basically a full beard. It should be gross, Sam thinks. It shouldn’t—

“You’re watching me,” James murmurs, without opening his eyes, and Sam flushes for what should be no reason: embarrassed at being caught. “Quit looking at me and watch the road like you’re supposed to.”
“Go to sleep, man, or I’ll put sand in your food.”

“There’s already sand in my food,” James says through another yawn. “There’s sand everywhere. I think there’s sand in my underwear at this point.”

“Oh, so you do wear underwear under your dumb tight tac gear,” Sam says without thinking, and James cracks open one eye, looks at Sam for an uncomfortably long time.

“It’d chafe, if I didn’t,” he says eventually. Shuts his eyes again, shifts slightly so that his knee is resting against Sam’s thigh. “I am tired. It’s hard to admit.”

“So I was right?”

“Yeah,” James agrees, “you were right.” A long pause, and then, drowsy, “I’m not supposed to—I shouldn’t. Show weakness. I’m not supposed to.”

“Well, you’re only human,” Sam says lightly,  holding back his own tension. “You don’t gotta be the perfect soldier, man, not for me.”

 

After that, James is different; a little more relaxed, more open. Faster to crack a joke, although the conversation still dries up whenever it turns to personal detail—about himself, anyway, he seems to soak up any scrap of information Sam offers about his life, his sister, his favorite food back home. The music he likes.

“No, I’m telling you, we get back to civilisation, somewhere with iPhones and an internet connection, I’m downloading Spotify and playing you some good Motown. The Trouble Man soundtrack, for starters, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Marvin Gaye.”

“I didn’t really—I missed a lot of modern music, you know?”

“Man, Marvin Gaye is not modern, he’s from back in the sixties. My mom and dad played him a lot when I was a kid, that’s probably your issue. Too white for funk, it’s a tragedy.”

“I grew up with jazz,” James shrugs. “And swing, the blues, all that. Glenn Miller, Robert Johnson, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, you like the old stuff. Wait, you know Robert Johnson,” Sam says, taken aback by this uncharacteristic volunteering of information. “And you don’t know Motown?”

“I dunno,” James says, face sliding back into that blank expression Sam’s come to recognize. “Never mind. Look alive, we’re getting somewhere.” He’s not wrong; there’s a dusty road in the distance, and beyond that, the outlines of something that might almost be a town. “You got any money?” James asks, and Sam shakes his head; if he had money, he’d have mentioned it by now, would have given Abdul something at least for his hospitality. “You know how to hotwire a car, then?”

“No,” Sam says, “what the fuck, man?”

“I mean, I learned how to steal cars back in Nazi Germany, I just figured it might still be something they teach you in the army, you know?”

“Ha ha,” Sam says. “You think you’re so fucking funny. Are you saying we might be able to quit walking and drive somewhere for once?”

“If there’s anything worth taking, yeah,” James says, and although he makes Sam wait outside town while he slips in to scope things out, half an hour later they’re piling their shit into the world’s oldest and most beat-up pick-up truck with the sole redeeming quality of a full tank of gas and two extra jerry-cans in the back. “Didn’t even need to hotwire it,” James says, shifting things over so Sam can get in, “they left the keys in the ignition.”

“Nice,” Sam says. “Does that make it a little less like breaking the law?”

“Well, I could have taken a couple goats, too,” James says, “but I figured that was extra trouble we don’t need, you know?”

Sam stares at him. James is deadpan, but Sam’s beginning to read his face, the way he holds his mouth, and after a few seconds of scrutiny he lets the mask slip. Grins, a flash of clean white teeth.

“Goats are assholes,” Sam says, fiddling with the radio dial to see if they can get any music for their drive to Karachi. “My uncle had a herd of them when I was a kid, he thought they’d be useful for his landscaping business. Three goats can clear a yard in a day, you know that? But they were mean little shits, I swear they hold grudges.”

“I wouldn’t know,” James says absently: metal left hand on the wheel, right hand shifting gear smooth like he’s done it a thousand times even though the truck has quite possibly never gotten a transmission service in its life. “Grew up in the city. Pretty sure the first time I saw a sheep I was deployed in Europe.”

“You are so full of shit,” Sam says fondly. “There’s no way. Aside from anything else, you would have been, what, like fifteen years old when the US deployed into Kosovo, so unless you’ve been moonlighting as a NATO peacekeeper at Camp Bondsteel then I’m pretty sure that’s a total lie.”

“You got me,” James says, although he’s frowning at the road like he’s unsettled by something. “Can, uh,” he asks after a minute or two, “can… you were a medic, right? You know about head injuries?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, I do. You not feeling so good, man?”

“I’m fine,” James says impatiently. “No headaches, nothing. It’s just. You know about anyone getting hit in the head and winding up with memory gaps, shit they should know that’s just… missing?”

“Right,” Sam says. “Yeah, right, I get you. Yeah, that can happen. Post-traumatic amnesia, although usually it’s more straight after the fact. Confusion, disorientation, that kind of thing. Forgetting you were in an accident, where you are, it’s pretty common.”

“I remember the accident,” James says. “I remember where I was, what I was doing, the mission I was on. I remember all of that, I just…”

There’s a long silence. Sam waits him out, watching how his frown gets deeper. “I just,” he says eventually, mouth set and unhappy, “I just don’t remember who I was, that’s all. I remember what I was doing, but before that—”

“I’m not a brain surgeon,” Sam says, keeping his voice gentle. “But I’m sure it’ll come back, man. Don’t stress about it.”

“It’s just,” James says. Swallows hard. “I think I used to be someone else.”

 

James refuses to volunteer anything else after that, to talk about why he might be—what, Sam thinks, some amnesiac assassin? He’s been watching too many spy thrillers—and they share the drive in slightly uncomfortable silence. Sam falls asleep, a few hours in: a warm truck, the quiet crackle of the radio, the roar of the engine and juddering vibration from the road, it’s enough to lull him into a doze. When he wakes up, James is whistling almost under his breath, fingers tapping rhythm on the steering wheel, and Sam yawns, kicks his feet up on the dash.

“So, why’d we go south?” he asks, something he’s been curious about since James first sketched out their route. “You seemed to figure it out pretty quick, why are we taking this way out, and not trying to get up through central Europe or some shit?”

“We were in Kandahar,” James says, obviously taking Sam's question seriously. “Easier to cross into Pakistan than trying to go north up into Tajik or Uzbek, that takes us right through heavy territory full of US troops. And we could have dropped down through the golden crescent, south into Iran and then up through Turkey into the Balkans, but that’s a pain in the ass these days. Too busy with drugs and trafficking, and we’d be high-profile enough that we stand out. Also, I’m pretty sure the people I was working for have connections with every warlord and drug cartel along the way, and if things were different they’d expect me to follow that route since it’s familiar. They’re less likely to think of this one.”

“Sounds to me like the people you were working for weren’t exactly the good guys,” Sam says, and watches James blink.

“Not exactly,” he agrees after a minute or two. “Why do you think they wanted you dead so bad?”

 

By the time they reach Karachi, and despite Sam’s nap, he feels dead on his feet. James must be tired too, driving for ten hours after days on the run, but he just stretches briefly, shoulders his pack.

“We can sell the truck,” he says, “make some money, nobody’s gonna ask where it came from. Probably can’t get any US currency, but who knows.”

He’s more successful than Sam expects: negotiates the sale in Urdu, hands over the keys in exchange for what seems like a huge amount of Pakistani rupees until Sam runs the currency conversion in his head and realizes it’s all of thirty bucks back home. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get some food, I’m fucking starving, they told me there’s somewhere good around here,” and he’s not wrong; a steaming mug of chai and three paratha later, Sam feels like might be ready to face another stressful and unappealing step of their plan.

“When you said, a boat,” he manages two hours later, “I thought you meant, like, a ferry service, not the hold of a cargo ship.”

“There aren’t any ferries between Karachi and Mumbai,” James says. “And it’s safer this way, if we’re not seen. We’ll have food, some bottles of water, it’ll be fine.”

Fine is overstating it, Sam thinks, but fine, whatever; it’s not like he has any choice. “Can we at least get a change of clothes first?” he asks, “no offence, but we both smell pretty fucking bad right now, if I’m gonna be trapped in a cargo hold with you it’d be nice if we were a little cleaner, you know?”

“Fine,” James says, his expression clear that he’s never once considered the necessity of clean clothes, and although they buy t-shirts, a couple of pairs of knock-off Levis from a street stall, it’s not until they’ve made it down into the dim and echoing space of a ship that he actually lets Sam change.

“We could have gotten a hotel,” Sam says, peeling off his t-shirt; it’s so sweat-stained and filthy by now he wouldn’t be surprised if it could stand up by itself. “Just for, like, one night. I could have had a shower. I mean, obviously you don’t shower, you’ve got that whole feral long-haired thing going on, but—”

“I shower,” James says. “When it’s a priority. Right now my priority is keeping you alive, okay, not making your life easy. We don’t have the money for a hotel, and I want at least two countries between us and the people chasing us before we can find somewhere to set up. But here, I got soap. So you can take a bottle of water and go wash, if that’s something you want to do. Be my guest, Wilson.”

Sam stares at James for a minute, brought up short. “You’re right,” he says eventually. “You’re right, I’m sorry. This is just… it’s a lot, you know?”

“Yeah,” James says, eyes softening. Still edgy, chewing his lip like he’s uncomfortable with what he’s just said. “I know.”

“Let me wash the blood out of your hair,” Sam says: a peace offering, and after a beat James nods. “Good, ‘cause I want to take another look at that head injury, make sure it really was just a superficial thing and you’re not gonna die on me in three days.”

“I’m not going to die on you,” James tells him, but he shucks off his tac jacket, glances down with distaste at his own t-shirt before pulling it off and tossing it aside. Sam feels himself brought up short again, for an entirely different reason this time; he’d known James was strong and that he had an advanced prosthetic but it’s a different story seeing him shirtless, his broad shoulders and lean muscle and a knotted mass of scarring where his metal arm meets his collarbone.

“Fuck,” Sam says, reflexive, and when James looks like he’s about to start apologizing he waves his hand, frowns in apology himself. “No, no, it’s not—you’re fine, J, it’s just, I didn’t realize it was integrated.”

“Hooked into my spine,” James says casually. “Neural connection, the works. They had to reinforce my whole shoulder with metal plates for it to take the load.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It ain’t so bad,” James shrugs, the twist of his mouth saying that it probably hurts a whole fucking lot. “You gonna help me with this mess, or what?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, distracted. “Yeah, sure.”

 

They both smell pretty rank, Sam doesn’t have any misapprehensions on that front, but three days of living and sleeping in small spaces together, he’s kind of used to it by now. James sits down in front of him, lets Sam tilt his head back so he can pour water into his hair, lather it as carefully as possible with the little bar of soap. “Lots of blood,” Sam says, “and you got half the desert in here, man, but your head looks just fine. I don’t even see where you got hit.”

“I heal quickly,” James says, and Sam huffs out a breath of laughter.

“Yeah, I got that from how you woke up after a two-day coma and then just turned out fine. Okay, I think that’s as good as we’re gonna get, I’m gonna rinse you out.” It’s intimate, his fingers in James’ hair, cradling the back of his neck; Sam’s a medic, he’s examined people before, he’s not a creep, and yet—the heat of James’ bare skin, the way he exhales when Sam cards his fingers over his scalp, it’s a lot to process. “There you go,” Sam says, hasty, propping James back upright. “Not perfect, but about as good as you’re gonna get from hand soap and bottled water.”

“If it’s not gonna turn into the kind of tangle I have to cut out with a knife, that’s good enough for me,” James says. “Thank you.” He reaches for his dirty t-shirt, pours some cold water on it, scrubs himself down brisk and efficient, and Sam figures he should do the same before it gets weird.

 

The first year on the run is endlessly miserable.

Every time Sam thinks they might have found comparative safety, might be able to settle in one place, let their guard down just a little, James decides it's time to leave. They head down through Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore and Chennai, across the Bay of Bengal in another goddamn cargo hold to Phuket: anywhere two American guys will blend in with other Westerners, tourists and rich European kids on their summer vacation to find inner nirvana or whatever along with a whole bunch of weed and beach parties. 

They're always in some dump or squat, some illegally tenanted slum or apartment block where the water's never connected but the neighbors don't ask questions, and of course they don't have any money; at least, nothing acquired through legal means. 

“All my accounts are burned,” James says, the one time Sam remembers watching Bourne Identity and asks James about his stashes, where he might keep money, passports, all the shit Sam assumes someone in covert ops should have on hand. “And I didn't work like that, anyway. They deployed me as needed. Kept me on ice otherwise.”

“So you don't have piles of cash in a Swiss bank deposit box?” Sam says. “Man, that's disappointing.”

“I can rob a bank, if you're saying we need money,” James says, deadpan, and it's only the corner of his mouth that betrays his smile. Sam shoves him in the ribs. Rolls his eyes.

“I kind of feel like that'll get more attention than we're looking for. But what do I know, I don't have a history of being an internationally wanted criminal on the run.”

“Believe it or not, it's new to me too,” James says, and maybe that's true but he still seems to know what he's doing a fuck of a lot better than Sam: bartering a day's work, pickpocketing trust fund kids for cash and Rolexes and expensive sunglasses. He sells the watches, mostly, trades them for food or a ride on the back of a truck or a month's rent in some shitty room, but keeps the sunglasses. One pair, anyway; Sam had said, half-joking, “man, those actually look pretty good on you, J,” and James had raised his eyebrows, shaken his head a little disbelieving but tucked them into the collar of his shirt.

“At least you got the language on your side,” Sam adds, because that's another point in James’ favor; Sam's keeping track, and so far it's at least six languages and counting. “I'm definitely chalking that one up to shady international assassin, there's no way someone normal can just know half a dozen different Indian dialects.”

“Maybe I travelled a lot,” James says, poorly feigning indifference. His memory's still shaky, more holes than anything solid; Sam's stopped trying to reassure him that it'll come back. “I dunno, maybe I was an army brat.”

“Maybe your parents were diplomats,” Sam agrees. “Maybe you were one of these trust fund kids in a previous life and you did your own south-east Asian vacation bullshit before going to college.”

“I'm pretty sure I didn't,” James says. “Go to college, I mean. I think I pretty much joined up straight out of school. You know, with the war on, felt like everyone was doing it.”

“Well, that's one thing we got in common, man. I had pretty much two choices: work for my dad, the family business, or sign up. Think my sister's still pretty mad I chose the air force.” Thinking about Sarah stings; there's no way to know how she's doing, what she's up to. She'd just taken over the business, according to the last email she'd sent Sam, had included a photo of the boat. Feel free to come back any time, I need someone to boss around now that I'm the boss.

“You miss her,” James says quietly.

Sam bites his lip. “Of course I do,” he says; he misses everyone, but Sarah's at the top of the list. “I just wish—one phone call, that's all. One email. A postcard. I just want her to know I'm not dead.”

 

It's not all terrible; even in shitty backalley dives, even when they have to move again and again, jumping country lines, paying off border officials, at least Sam's not alone. He knows it'd have been impossible, doing this shit by himself; god, if it'd been up to Sam he'd probably have headed back to base, a death sentence he didn't even know was on his head.

“You know, you never did tell me who it was coming after us,” he says one evening: heat cracking over 90, a monsoon threatening but never breaking, and the power keeps going out, the crappy pedestal fan idling and useless. Sam's used to heat, growing up down in Delacroix, but their room right now is tiny, airless, a couple of rickety narrow twin cots, and Sam's antsy, irritable, in desperate need of distraction.

James goes silent for a minute. “I dunno,” he says eventually, “if it's safe. And I'm still trying to figure out in my own head what's real, what's just the brain injury fucking things up in here. There's shit that… I dunno, there's shit that can't be right.”

Sam doesn't want to push; James’ memories are still a hot issue, and they've learned by now that trying too hard makes it worse. “Yeah,” he says, “okay, fine, but—”

“You're just bored,” James says, that uncanny ability he has sometimes to figure out exactly what's going on in Sam's head. “Want me to tell you a bedtime story, huh?”

“Shut up,” Sam says without heat. “You could hold the flashlight for me so I can read my book, if that's a better option.”

“If I hold the flashlight, will you read out loud?”

“Jesus Christ,” Sam says. “Yeah, fine, if you hold the flashlight I'll read my book out loud. I'm not going back to the start, though. You're just gonna have to put up with being three chapters in.”

“Oh, I've been reading it while you're asleep,” James shrugs, and Sam pauses, glares at him ineffectually through the dark.

“That's why I kept losing my place? I can't believe you, man, what the hell.”

“Sorry,” James says, not sounding sorry in the slightest, and then his bed creaks as he stands up, makes his way over to sit down next to Sam. “Here,” he says, “if I hold the light we can both read at the same time, I'll just read over your shoulder. How's that?”

“Better not bug me to turn the pages too fast,” Sam mutters. Settles down with his back to the wall, the book held between them in the hot white beam of the flashlight, and that actually works pretty well for a solid hour or so; wind picking up outside, sweat down the back of Sam's spine and prickling over the nape of his neck, James’ quietly even breath beside him.

“My arm is getting tired,” James says eventually. “And I think the flashlight's batteries are gonna die.”

“You got some kind of cyborg prosthetic and they didn't even think to put an LED in your fingertip, huh?”

“Well,” James says, “they couldn't think of everything, I guess,” and Sam shrugs agreement. Dog-ears the corner of the page, closes his book and sets it aside, reaches for the bottle of water beside him.

“Wish this storm would break,” he mutters, “I'm so fucking—” and realizes that James is looking at him, intent, focused, the kind of breathlessly still observation that makes Sam's heart speed up a little.

“So fucking what?” James asks after a pause, breaking eye contact; takes Sam's water, lifts the bottle to his own lips.

“So hot,” Sam says, “so… I dunno, J. Just over it, you know?”

James hums under his breath. Looks back at Sam: his eyes, his mouth, his eyes again. The flashlight is still on, a shockingly harsh circle casting shadows everywhere, and Sam watches James lick his lips, open his mouth to say something before he bites his lip, hesitates. Looks away.

“What is it?” Sam asks; are you—do you—

“You want to know where I come from,” James says, and Sam knows that isn't what he was gonna say thirty seconds ago. “You ever hear of an organization called Hydra?”

“World War Two shit,” Sam says. “Nazis, right?”

“I don't think it ended with the war. I know it didn't. Because that's who was pulling my strings: Hydra, embedded inside other systems. Inside the Nazis, the Soviets, in America, didn't matter which. The goals were the same. They used me to sow chaos everywhere I went.”

“James,” Sam murmurs; not sure what to say next. 

“I don't know their names,” James continues. “The people controlling me, the ones giving me my orders. But I remember why I was in Afghanistan. The mission. They needed me to destabilize the US war effort. False flag operations, make it look like the army was committing war crimes. Atrocities, murdering civilians and torturing prisoners.”

“They were already doing that,” Sam says, swallowing hard. “Abu Ghraib, Bagram, the army and the CIA already have blood on their hands, Hydra didn't need false flag shit for that.”

“Maybe,” James acknowledges. “But they needed me starting shit between warlords too. Chaos, Sam, total destabilization, not just bringing down a single regime. That's who I was. That's what I was doing. Why they needed to kill you just for knowing I exist.”

“James—” Sam says. Touches James’ hand, watches him flinch. “That wasn't you, man. They made you do those things. You didn't have a choice.”

“Yeah,” James agrees, hollow, voice raw. “I know. But I did it.”

 

They're still in Surat Thani when Sam gets sick: food poisoning, he thinks at first, or stomach flu, or just not used to the food, although that's unlikely by now. “Can you believe I grew up eating nothing but potatoes and chipped fuckin’ beef,” James says once, halfway through a bowl of red curry so spicy his face is flushed and eyes streaming. “Never mind being a wanted fugitive, I'm gonna die from how hot this is.”

“You don't have to keep eating it,” Sam says, amused, “I'm sure they've got something milder. Plain white rice, say.”

“Nah, I'm eating it,” James says, mouth full; it's disgusting, Sam thinks, it should be disgusting, but then James swallows, wipes his thumb over his bottom lip. “It's the best thing I've ever eaten in my whole goddamn life,” he adds, “you gotta try it, Sam,” and actually tries to feed Sam a spoonful.

“I got it, I got it, I don't need you feeding me, man. I have my own spoon. Oh, yeah, fuck, that's good. What is that, shrimp? Crab? Gimme some more.”

They eat from street stalls, mostly; another reason to love south-east Asia, Sam guesses, the ability to live in a one-room apartment and not worry about where to find their next meal. He's not complaining; for starters, he handles chilli a fuck of a lot better than James, starts making fun of him every time they sit down to eat. So when he gets sick, he doesn't worry too much: just a bug, it'll pass, maybe he was a little too relaxed about drinking the water or something.

Three days later he's still sick, worse; can't keep anything down, even coconut water or the imported Gatorade James managed to find at the market. Starts shivering in the heat of their tiny room, clammy sweat cooling on his skin, and James frowns at him, holds the back of his hand against Sam's forehead.

“This seems like more than just food poisoning. You're burning up.” 

“Really?” Sam manages, teeth chattering, “I'm fucking freezing. Are there any more blankets?”

James looks at him again, his face serious. Takes Sam's hand, holds two fingers against his pulse, pinches the skin on the back of his hand. Checking for dehydration, Sam realizes, and starts running his own mental checklist.

“I ain't a medic,” James says. “But if I was, I'd say you should be at the hospital right now, sweetheart.”

“Can't,” Sam says, “it isn't safe,” and James sighs.

“Yeah, I know. Okay, I'll be right back. Don't die of puking while I'm gone.”

“I'll do my best,” Sam gets out; he can't even focus on his book, his eyes hurt and his head aches and all he wants is to be somewhere with air conditioning, running water, a toilet that's not a nightmare to puke in.

When James gets back he comes in quietly, but it still startles Sam out of a doze. “Still alive?” he asks softly. Sam groans.

“I feel like hammered shit. Don't tell me you're gonna try and make me eat something.”

“Wasn't planning on it. Hold still, this will just take a minute.”

Sam's pretty out of it; he doesn't pay attention to what James is doing until he feels James’ hands on his arm, the briefly cold swipe of an alcohol swab over the inside crook of his elbow. “What—” he says, and there's a sting, the pinprick shiver as James inserts an IV needle.

“Isotonic fluids,” James says. “Saline and dextrose, some anti-nausea meds, you should feel better soon.”

“Man, did you go out and rob an ER?”

“No,” James says, sounding offended. “I broke into a hospital pharmacy supply, that's much less high profile.”

“Oh, sure, that's way better.” 

James is silent. Sam lies still, watching him arrange the IV line, hang the bag up above Sam's bed; he looks tired, Sam thinks, and feels a flash of guilt. “Sorry,” he says. “That I got sick. Sorry you're having to look after me like this.”

“You're fine,” James says, touching his fingertips briefly to Sam's forehead: metal fingers, cool on his overheated skin. Sam sighs out loud.

“Feels good,” he says, eyes sliding shut, and James pauses for a second before Sam hears his footsteps across the room. When he comes back it's with a damp washcloth, gently wiping the sweat off Sam's face, the back of his neck, and Sam sighs again. “You don't have to—”

“Wilson,” James interrupts, “shut up, okay?” and Sam does; stays quiet, even when the bed dips behind him with James’ weight, the warmth of his body radiating into Sam. “You're not regulating your own heat real well,” James murmurs like he needs to explain himself. “I remember—sometimes, with fevers, this is the best way to keep a body warm.”

“It's fine,” Sam says, voice slurring with exhaustion. “I don't mind.”

“I just wanted to make sure—”

“James,” Sam says again, “I don't mind. You're good, man.” You feel good, he wants to say, I want you—I want you to stay. I want you here.

 

When he wakes up the next day, James is gone and Sam's fever has broken; for the first time in days he feels well enough to sit up, to drink the bottle of water by his bed and trust that he'll keep it down.

“You're awake,” James says, getting up from where he's sitting cross-legged on the other bed. “Feeling better?”

“How long was I out?”

“Long enough. Look, I know you're not gonna like this, but I think we should try and get going as soon as you're up to walking.”

“How did I know that was coming,” Sam sighs. “Yeah, okay, I hear you. Where to next?”

“We don't need to go far,” James says. “I don't think we gotta skip the country, I haven't picked anyone up on our tail since we got this side of the Gulf. Just down the coast, a couple provinces away, I'd feel better about it, you know?”

“Tell me it's not gonna be in a boat,” Sam says, “if it's in a boat I'll puke on you, man,” and James grins.

“We can take the train. I can even book us a sleeper carriage, if that'd make you feel any better.”

“You know,” Sam says, “it really would.”

 

In the end it's not even James who notices that they're made; it's Sam.

They're in the Yala market, picking up lunch, and Sam shivers. Frowns, pausing, and James glances back. Lifts his sunglasses.

“You okay?”

“Can't shake the feeling that someone's watching us,” Sam says. “Probably overthinking it, but—”

“Who?” James murmurs, low and urgent, and Sam tilts his head minutely to the left. 

“Red-haired girl in sunglasses, my ten o'clock,” he says. “Sounds dumb, but I swear I've seen her half a dozen times today, and she's trying to look like a tourist, part of a group, but I haven't seen anyone else talk to her.” He watches James look, casual: a scan of the marketplace like he's just searching for the best food stand.

“I feel like I recognize her,” James mutters. “Don't know how the fuck that's possible, but—”

“You think she's from Hydra?”

“I mean, that would make sense, but… I feel like the last time I saw her I was trying to kill her, not work with her. It doesn't make sense.”

“What do you want to do? Leave?”

“I want to know what the fuck she's doing here,” James says grimly. “Because if we leave, and it turns out she's feeding intel back up to the wrong people, that's our cover and location blown and we've got a whole lot of trouble coming our way. Just… stick with me, okay, if she was gonna try and kill us in the open she'd probably have done it already, so I'm gonna do something kind of dumb and give her the opportunity to get a little closer.”

Sam doesn't think James has dumb in him, when it comes to this kind of covert ops spy bullshit, so he follows James easily enough down a side-street, quieter away from the crowds of shoppers and tourists.

“Fellas,” the redhead says five minutes later. Takes off her sunglasses, perches them on the top of her head. “Thought I recognized you. Odessa, right?”

“Did I shoot you?” James asks, “I kind of—I'm pretty sure I shot you.”

She raises one eyebrow. Lifts the hem of her tank top to show a raised scar low on her side. “You tell me,” she says, low and wry, and James nods.

““I shot out your tires,” he says. “Sent you off a cliff. But you were covering the target.”

“So you shot him right through me. Thanks a lot, asshole, you know how hard it is to wear bikinis now?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “I bet you look terrible in them.”

“Anyway,” she says, ignoring him, “after all that, I'm kind of surprised to run into you again. Especially, you know, when you're not all…” She waves her hand, a vague gesture that should mean nothing but somehow translates perfectly to goth leather tac gear, and Sam can't help it, turns the laugh that escapes into a cough before James can frown at him.

“You're not here for us, then?” James asks, intent, and she shakes her head. Swirls her straw around in her iced tea.

“Not unless you're going to get in the way of my mission again. Honestly, you're a ghost. I tried to get info on you after Odessa and most of the intelligence community said you didn't exist.”

“Yeah?” James says, eyes dark. “What'd the other half say?”

“That you're responsible for two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. Don't tell me how that's possible.”

“Spy ghost stories,” James shrugs. “We're all full of shit, right.”

“So you're not here for my guy,” she says. “Fine by me. Just stay out of my way.”

“You got a name?” James asks, and she considers him for a second. Grins, the kind of smile Sam recognizes by now: it's uncanny how similar they are.

“Natasha,” she says. “And you?”

“Retired,” James says. “So I'd appreciate it, Natasha, if you'd forget about us before you write your mission report.”

“Already forgotten,” Natasha says. “Like you said, you're a ghost story. See you round, Odessa.”

 

“Well,” Sam says once they're back in the safety of their cheap hotel, shivering a little despite the afternoon heat. “That was unnerving. Is that what all spy conversations are like, when you're not shooting at each other?”

“Maybe we should split up,” James says, frowning like he doesn't like the idea even as he's saying it, and Sam pauses.

“Split up? Why?”

“If she found us—recognized me—that means other people might too. Splitting up, it might take the heat off you. Far as I can tell, the army thinks you're dead. The people looking for me, they know I'm not.”

“I was air force,” Sam says, “not army, but—how do you know, man?”

“I know,” James says. Face settling into an implacable mask. “You could probably settle down, live under the radar, wouldn't be an issue. I know you hate it, being on the run, I don't want to make you—”

“Do you want to?” Sam asks, cutting in, and James pauses.

“Do I want to what?”

“Split up,” Sam says. “‘Cause if it's, you know, if it's giving you more problems having me come with you, then yeah, we should go do our own thing. You can, I dunno, continue to roam the world for the next fifty years until all the people hunting you down are dead, and maybe I can get some fake papers, set myself up somewhere with no extradition to the US. You don't have to feel responsible for me for the rest of time just because we went through one round of bad shit together. But if you're just saying that ‘cause you think you're making me do something I don't wanna do, then—”

“I don't want to,” James says. “Sam, Christ, I don't want to leave you behind, I don't want to go do our own thing, I want you with me and I don't care what that looks like, okay? I just—I wanted to make sure you knew. That you had a choice.”

“Cool,” Sam agrees. “Okay. That's us, then,” and then everything unfolds in his chest: James’ expression, the way he's looking at Sam like he never wants to look away. How Sam knows every pitch of James’ voice, how he's seen James stumbling around their terrible slum apartments every morning in nothing but boxers, eyes heavy with sleep and still getting Sam coffee, how his eyes slide almost-closed when Sam catches him by surprise with a joke that makes him really laugh. The rise and fall of his breath, in the nights they've slept side by side, shoulder to shoulder; the steady heat of his body. “That's,” Sam says again, and can't fucking stand it, can't do anything except step in closer, slide his hands up into James’ hair and pull him down into a kiss.

“Oh,” James murmurs against Sam's mouth, “oh, Jesus Christ, sweetheart, thank God, I thought it was just me,” and then he's kissing Sam back, kissing him like he's been thinking about it for days or weeks or months.

 

“Does this count as Stockholm syndrome?” Sam asks afterwards, mostly joking, and James shrugs.

“I dunno what that is.” It's a familiar refrain by now, and Sam doesn't bother to explain. Just finds the Wikipedia article on his phone, hands it over for James to catch up. “I don't think you've got Stockholm syndrome,” James says after a couple of minutes reading. “For starters, sweetheart, I didn't kidnap you. Not my fault you got a target on your back.”

“No,” Sam agrees, “not your fault. We're gonna leave, though, right? Even if she…”

“Oh, absolutely. I want us to be at least five hours away from the whole province by this time tomorrow. Where do you feel like going, Malaysia or Cambodia?”

“Is one of them going to involve a fucking cargo hold again?”

“Honestly, yeah. Maybe not a cargo hold, we could probably stand to take it a little easier. But I tell you what, we head up through Songkhla, jump a boat to Pattaya and I'll let us set up somewhere on a nice beach for at least three months to make up for it. You won't even have to learn how to order coffee in another language, and it'll be easier than getting across the whole gulf.”

“Can we afford that?”

“Oh, I robbed a heroin trafficker in Phuket,” James shrugs. “Your suggestion about robbing a bank gave me a few ideas.”

“Hey, I wasn't the one who suggested it,” Sam says. “A heroin trafficker? Seriously? Won't that bring, I dunno, the cartels down on us?”

“Nah, it wasn't a big enough deal to bring in any negative attention. Rival gangs, dirty cops, it happens all the time. Don't worry, I haven't been dealing heroin on the side, none of that shit. I just took his cash.”

“So, we could have been staying somewhere a little nicer, that's what I'm hearing,” Sam says, and James laughs out loud.

“We're good for cash, sweetheart, that doesn't mean we can splash out.”

“But you'll find us somewhere nice on the beach,” Sam murmurs. Slides his fingers into James’ hair, tightens his grip until James groans. “Somewhere with a big bed, those mosquito net curtains? Running water?”

“Hmm,” James says, another moan caught at the back of his throat, and rolls Sam over to kiss him until he stops talking.

 

They only hear about it a few days later, when James goes down to the beachside market near their newest home to buy coffee and sticky rice and mangos: a truck bomb two days ago in Yala, the shopping district, and then another explosion just as people were flooding in to rescue the injured.

“You think it was her?” Sam asks, unwrapping the banana leaves around his rice. “Natasha? Think she set the bomb?”

“I think it was someone trying to stop her,” James says grimly. “The kind of people who sent me to shoot a target through her.”

“Are we safe here?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” James sighs, tired and wryly ironic, “we ain't safe anywhere, you know that.”

 

The internet connection isn't great where they've wound up, not that Sam expected it to be—James was full of shit about Pattaya, got them off the ferry and straight onto another one down the coast to Koh Chang—and it usually takes a few days for any kind of international news to filter through. Which is why it's weird, a month later, to be heading home and see that everyone else in town seems to be in the one bar that has a big TV.

“Something’s up,” he says, calling James. “Come downtown, I'm at that bar we never go to.”

“Something like what?” James asks, and Sam can't give an answer; something like 9/11, he wants to say, except that instead of terrorists and planes flying into the World Trade Center it's goddamn aliens, a portal opening over Stark Tower, evacuations all the way through Manhattan and some group of plucky superheroes flying around like they've got alien-fighting experience.

“Is that—” he says, minutes or hours in: the flash of red hair, someone jumping off a shield and onto one of the alien hovercraft, and James nods.

“Yeah,” he says, “that's her, yeah, and they got some poor guy dressed up as Captain America too. He keeps throwing the shield around like that and he's gonna break his fingers, I swear to God.”

“Oh, ‘cause you've got first-hand experience with the shield, sure,” Sam mutters. James elbows him hard in the ribs. 

“I'm just saying, that's all. If he doesn't have reinforced bones he can't catch the shield like that or he'll wind up with arthritis at thirty-five.”

Sam grins. “You've got arthritis at thirty,” he murmurs, “you're always complaining about your aching knees, how bad your back is killing you.”

“I got my arm blown off, I'm not exactly an average thirty year old.”

“Yeah, for starters, you don't understand any pop culture references. You know how many internet memes I can't tell you about?” To be fair, Sam thinks, his own pop culture references are a year out of date, given how little they're able to keep up with the news or the internet while maintaining their backpacker fugitive lifestyle, but even so. James doesn't even know who Iron Man is, for fuck's sake. 

 

“We should probably think about moving soon,” James says the next morning; eyes a little absent like he's already planning their next move.

“I don't want to leave. I like it here.”

“You like it here because of the beach and the nice house,” James says indulgently. “You won't like it so much when it's the rainy season and we can't leave the house for a month.”

“Doesn't sound so bad. There are things we can do inside.”

“We been doing them,” James says, “unless you wanna break out the Monopoly board?”

“Come on, man,” Sam says, and James makes eye contact across the breakfast table, smiles in the way that promises more.

 

It's not like the whole trip is a vacation, or anything; Sam's been reminding himself of that all along, even as they're taking in the kind of views he'd only ever expected to see on a postcard. Gleaming temples, lush green jungle and rice fields, beaches with golden sand and such sparkling clear water Sam can see why every second twenty-something wants to come and do too many drugs, full-moon parties for as long as their parents’ money will last. James tends to avoid the beach, unless it's a rare opportunity away from the crowds: the metal arm is pretty distinctive, Sam figures, and besides, getting the sand out of the joints is a pain in the ass.

It's not a vacation, but maybe the heat and the air and the tourists make them sloppy, make them a little too relaxed. Koh Chang feels like another world, an island haven away from everything Sam's ever known, and on top of that he and James are just wildly, bewilderingly gone on each other; they spend whole days in bed—white sheets and fluffy drifts of mosquito netting just the way Sam wanted—and fuck, languid and lazy, until they're sticky with sweat and hungry for tropical fruit.

“Maybe I don't gotta figure out who I was,” James says, drowsy, sated, Sam combing his fingers slowly through his hair. “Maybe this is who I could be, huh?”

“Independently wealthy?” Sam asks. “Living that one-percenter expat life? God, my high school girlfriend would give me such shit, I can just hear her now. She was always trying to get me to join a young socialists club, there was one on campus up in New Orleans and she used to drive up, pretend she was a college student. Last email I got she was heading into New York for that Occupy Wall Street thing.”

“I had a friend like that,” James says. “Tried to join the Communist party once, until I pointed out he probably wouldn't be able to sign up for the army if he was a card-carrying Communist who'd signed on the dotted line.”

“When was this? Before you joined up?”

“Yeah, I guess. Think we went to school together. Can't remember his name but God he was a pain in my ass. Maybe my best friend, fuck.” James’ expression goes from gently amused to a little concerned; “I should know who he was, right? I should be able to remember that.”

“Probably,” Sam agrees. “It is what it is, J, you know that. You know it doesn't matter to me.”

“Matters to me,” James mutters, “but as long as you're happy…”

“Just don't forget me, baby,” Sam tells him. Indulgent, unnecessarily sentimental, but James’ eyes soften, his breath slowing as he focuses on Sam's face.

“I could never,” he says, “you know that, sweetheart,” and yeah: Sam knows.

 

So they're on vacation, a perfect dream within a nightmare; Sam should have known it couldn't last.

He's coming home from town one morning, iced coffee and a bag of banana roti in hand, when he sees the four-wheel drive, the black-clad figures loading their weapons. Thinks: fuck. Fuck, I gotta—

Drops the iced coffee. Turns down the side road, the alley that loops up behind the temple and drops them down basically into their back yard, and starts running full-tilt; slams in through the open French doors. “Assault team,” he gasps. “On the street. We gotta—”

“Christ,” James says, “oh, Christing fuck, sweetheart, go, get your shit—” and he's already moving, shoving his feet into boots, grabbing his jacket and pack. Sam's still winded from the sprint but he's right behind, watching James turn the switch on the gas canister for their little kitchen stove. “Go,” James says, urgent, and then there's the bang of an explosion, a flash grenade thrown in through their front door and gunfire immediately following; Sam is going, moving, out the way he's come, and James is tossing a lit match at the gas, grabbing Sam by the shoulder and pulling him forward until they're both on the street, sliding into the waiting truck that the assault team have thank God left running.

“We gotta,” Sam says, and then there's another explosion, louder: the gas stove, he guesses. James is already driving, one-handed, gas pedal right down to the floor and taking the narrow island roads faster than they were ever meant to be driven. “We—you're going the wrong way, we gotta get to the ferry—”

“I got a speedboat docked round the other side of the island,” James says. “Just in case.”

“Right,” Sam says, “okay,” and touches his side where it feels like he's still got the world's worst stitch. His hand comes away sticky with blood. Christ, that's something else to deal with; he probes the skin, tries to assess the damage. Not great, but he'll live. Fuck it hurts.

“You're bleeding,” James says, alarm in his voice, and Sam shakes his head.

“I'm fine. Lucky shot, through and through. Gimme a minute and the med kit once we get to the boat and I can patch myself up.” 

Turns out he's not fine; losing more blood than he realized, and all of a sudden he's dizzy, light-headed, gray creeping in at the edges of his vision.

“Oh, Jesus fuckin’ Christ, sit down before you fall down,” James snaps—voice undercut with concern—and maybe Sam fades out a little, comes to a couple minutes later to feel James inserting an IV tube in his arm.

“What—”

“Field transfusion,” James says. “I'm a universal donor, you'll be fine. Except for how you got fucking shot and lost at least a pint, you beautiful fuckin’ asshole.”

“Oh, like you can talk,” Sam mutters, although to be fair James recovered pretty fast from what was basically a near-death experience in the desert and since then it's definitely been Sam in more need of medical attention. “Not my fault I'm only human.”

“Christ almighty,” James says, a whisper under his breath, metal hand on the boat’s steering wheel and right hand slack at his side for the goddamn IV line, and God Sam is sick of boats but right now all he can think is thank God James thought ahead again, planned for this while all Sam was thinking about was how nice the fucking beach was.

“I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“It's my fault. I wanted to stay longer.”

“Don't,” James says. “Don't apologize for that, Sam, Jesus.”

“It was nice, though, right?” Sam asks. “While it lasted.”

“Yeah,” James agrees. “Yeah, it was.”

“I think we should stop running,” Sam says, ignoring the pain from his side. “When we get to where we're going next. I think we should start going after them instead. And I know where we could start.”

 

It's easy enough to find her real name, now that Black Widow is a superhero that kids dress up as for Halloween. Natasha Romanoff. James snaps a photo of Angkor Wat, sends an email from a burner address that's all numbers: thought about retirement? 

“Glad to see you're not dead,” she says a week later: lounging against his scooter outside the Old Market, eating ice cream out of a split coconut like she's just decided to swing by for a vacation. “What's up? I'm assuming you're letting me into the club. It's an honor, Wilson.”

“Come on,” Sam says, rolling his eyes; it should be alarming that she knows his name, probably, but to be honest he'd kind of expected that already. “I don't have a spare helmet, you're just gonna have to hold on.”

“It wasn't me,” she says as they climb onto the moped. “In Koh Chang. I didn't tip them off about you. They just got lucky, caught James’ profile in the corner of some security camera footage.”

“Given that I got shot about it,” Sam says, fastening his helmet, “believe me that if I thought you had something to do with it, we wouldn't be talking right now.”

“It's their new surveillance program. You're gonna have to be more careful. Figure out better ways to hide.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “everyone is trying to kill us, that's where you come in. Wanna help us take down an international terrorist organization?”

“Sure,” Natasha says. “Sounds fun. I needed a new hobby anyway.”

 

With Natasha on their side, it's easier to operate: she can keep them off the radar, make sure they've got enough money to get by. Can arrange passports, papers, although they're staying put for now: safer if you don't try crossing borders, Natasha says, that's a high-risk area for surveillance right now. A house in the jungle, rural Cambodia; it's not the worst situation Sam's faced, the last couple of years, even with the rainy season coming.

“You, uh,” Sam says, a few months in—waiting until they've built enough trust that he's pretty sure she's not gonna sell them out—and pulls out his wing-pack, dusty from sitting under the bed for the last three months. He's dragged it around ever since Afghanistan; take it, James had said, that first frantic night, can't leave anything behind that'll show we were here, and who knows, maybe we'll figure out how to repair it. They'd never been successful, had carried it anyway from city to city, country to country, shoved at the bottom of Sam's pack despite the fact that it added like twenty pounds to lug around. “If you get a chance,” he says, “and you know anyone who might be able to fix it. No pressure. And I don't have to tell you—”

“It's super classified, yeah, I know. I've already got the schematics. Pararescue, huh? You didn't even give me a fake name, Wilson.”

“Didn't know I was supposed to,” Sam shrugs. “J didn't have a problem with it, so…”

What else do you know about me? he wants to ask, did you look up Sarah, do you know how she's doing?

 

Inevitably, the news about Captain America breaks. The return of a nation's hero, it's the kind of good news America desperately needs while trying to rebuild New York after an alien attack. When Sam gets home, James is sitting on the couch: very still, his laptop open in front of him. Sam gets the feeling he's learned something big, something heavy; he puts his keys in the bowl, sits down next to James and takes the laptop from him. The screen's gone dark; it jolts back to life when Sam picks it up, lights up to show the website James has open. The New York Times, an article about an exhibition that's just opened in the Smithsonian. Steve Rogers, a symbol of the nation.

“It wasn't just some guy,” James says. “In New York, I mean. It wasn't just some guy dressed up as Captain America. It was really him.”

“I don't get it,” Sam says, “how did he… He died in World War Two, J, how can he still be alive now?”

James laughs, hollow. “Turns out, not everyone who died in World War Two stayed dead. Keep reading, you'll see what I mean.”

Sam scrolls further down the article. Skims for content, not sure what he's looking for, but it's not hard to find: an inset photo, black and white, the kind from history books or old newsreel. Captain America's unit, the Howling Commandos, and there on his left is a face that Sam knows so intimately he could draw it from memory if someone asked. Younger, a little softer in the eyes and the jaw, but—

“So,” Sam says. “When you were joking about learning to steal cars in Nazi Germany. I guess you weren't joking, huh?”

James laughs again, a wild note in it. “I didn't understand what I was remembering,” he says. “None of it made any sense. I guess now we know why.”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Sam says thoughtfully. “So you got that right, at least. Did you know? When I asked you your name? Or was it just luck?”

“I must have known,” James says. “It can't… it can't have been a coincidence. I didn't even know it until you asked.”

“What did they call you?”

“Soldier,” James says. “The Winter Soldier. Soldat. Or the Asset.”

“Does it change anything, knowing who you were?”

“No,” James says. Slow, thoughtful. “But it changes things, knowing who knew.”

 

Natasha shows up a week later, prearranged; don't come, Sam wants to say, but they don't communicate over phone lines except in emergencies, and he doesn't quite know whether this counts. She's not stupid, reads the room as soon as she arrives: the new wall of intel and connections, Hydra all the way back to 1944. The print-out photo of Steve Rogers.

“You knew,” James says. “You knew that he was alive. Who I was, who I used to be. What we were to each other.”

To her credit, Natasha doesn't flinch or dissemble; just nods, holding Bucky's gaze. “Not at first,” she says. “I only knew you from Odessa. But when he came out of the ice, practically everyone in SHIELD did the background reading. Your face was pretty distinctive. And the history: Hydra, your time in Azzano. What happened?”

“They were trying to make their own supersoldier,” James says. “When I fell off the train, it must have helped me survive. I woke up and my arm was already gone. Then—”

“They put you on ice,” Natasha says gently. “Except when they needed you.”

“You should have told me,” James says to her; not angry, just tired, resigned. “I deserved to know.”

“Yeah,” Natasha agrees. “I made a bad call, James. I'm sorry.”

“Is he,” James says. Swallows hard. “Is he okay? Do you know him?”

“I've met him once or twice,” Natasha says. “He seems okay. He seems—”

“What?”

“Lonely,” she says. “He always seems like he's lonely.”

 

Now that James has the information about who he used to be, the memories about who he was after Hydra got to him seem to come in faster. He's able to map out whole divisions: teams, asset handlers, all the people who kept the Winter Soldier running in and out of the field.

“Brock Rumlow?” Natasha asks one morning, picking up James’ latest notes. “Seriously? The guy's an asshole, but I didn't know he was Hydra.”

“The whole team,” James says. “Called themselves something weirdly aggrandising.”

“STRIKE Team Alpha,” Natasha says, “yeah, that tracks. How do you wanna play this?”

“I don't think we can take him out without tipping our hand. But these fuckers in Europe? I think you're good to go for clearing them out.”

“Baron von Strucker,” Natasha says. “Christ, they even have evil names, huh?”

“I wish we could work faster,” James sighs. “That there was a way to take down Hydra once and for all. I'll be a hundred before we get there, at this rate.”

“You're already a hundred,” Sam says from where he's sitting, going through the files Natasha's brought. “Isn't that right?”

“Ninety-six,” Natasha adds, “hey, maybe when you hit a century the Queen will send you a birthday card.”

“We can start pureeing your food,” Sam says, getting into it. “You need a walker, man? Some false teeth? Reading glasses?”

“You're terrible people,” James says, “just truly the worst people,” and Sam thinks about Natasha saying he seems lonely. About what it must be like to be a hundred years old and under thirty all at once, alone in a foreign world with nobody even there to make jokes about it, and his heart aches a little bit for Captain America.

 

Maybe it was fate, Sam thinks later; maybe it was the irony of feeling sorry for Captain America that made the universe laugh a little too hard, because barely three months later he and James are washing the dinner dishes, splashing suds at each other and bickering over why it's always Sam on washing duty, when there's the scrape of a footstep behind them that Sam recognizes as someone very quiet making themselves deliberately heard.

“Hey, Steve,” James says. Turns to face him, dropping the dishcloth on the kitchen counter. “You been sent to kill us, pal?”

Captain America—Steve—goes very still. Sam can see his mouth working, the shock of emotion in his face, and then after a pause he says, in a voice much quieter than Sam might have expected, “Bucky?”

Bucky? Sam mouths, disgusted, and James tilts his head minutely, acknowledging that Sam's got a point. “Yeah,” he says out loud. “Hi, Steve.”

“You're alive,” Steve says, and James nods.

“You're alive.”

“I'm also alive,” Sam announces. “Just in case, you know, anyone was wondering.”

“And I'd really like you to stay that way, sweetheart,” James says, a little amused and maybe trying to hide it. “So I'm gonna have to insist, Steve, you can't kill Sam.”

“He's,” Steve says. Swallows hard. “He's my mission.”

“Sam? Not me?”

“Two high-value targets,” Steve says. Unblinking, blue eyes so sincere Sam can understand how people would look at him and decide that yeah, this is a guy to follow. “Eliminate him, and bring you in alive at all costs. They didn't—I got a picture of—of Wilson, but they said you'd never been caught on surveillance. I just knew I'd find you if I found him.”

“And what did they tell you?” James asks, jaw hard. “That we're terrorists? Enemies of the state? What made them send Captain fuckin’ America after us, huh?”

“Buck,” Steve says, still sincere, earnest all the way to his bones. Drops his shield to the floor, holds his hands palm-open, yearning. “You and your friend, you're working for Hydra. They showed me the files. The attacks. I can't let you do that, Bucky, you know that. I didn't—you gotta believe I didn't know it was you. But you gotta come in.”

“Yeah, that's not happening,” James says grimly. “Sorry, Steve. I don't want to fight you. But I can't let you complete your mission.”

Steve has been unnaturally still this whole time, the kind of precise focus Sam's gotten used to from James, but now he shifts very slightly. Narrows his eyes, touches his earpiece. Turning it off, Sam realizes, after receiving a new order—

“You shaped the century,” he says. His tone softer, coaxing. “The work you were doing, the work we can do together, it's a gift to mankind, Bucky, don't you understand that? I'm not leaving you again. To the end of the line, pal.”

“My name is James,” James says, unsteady: chewing his lip, eyes wide. “You—why are you—”

“Come on, Buck,” Steve murmurs, “come home, would you?” and then, another tiny shift in his stance, his body language, “zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat’.”

“No,” James says, fear in his eyes now, “Steve, no, you—”

“Rassvet,” Steve continues, and James has never looked so afraid, an animal in a trap. There's a gun holstered at his back; Sam reaches for it, flicks off the safety. Takes aim, exhales, fires. Once, twice, a third for good measure. The shots are loud, too loud; neighbors will have heard, but it can't be helped, fingers crossed they'll think it's a car backfiring. 

“You,” James says, shocked, “Jesus Christ, Sam, you shot him.” He's across the kitchen on his knees already, pressing flesh and metal fingers to Steve's chest, the blood pooling on the floor. 

“Shot to wound, not to kill,” Sam says. Drops down beside James, grabs the knife from the holster James still wears out of habit and cuts open Steve's tac jacket. “He'll survive, assuming his healing rate is anything like yours. But we need to keep him out cold until we're safe, go get me that horse tranquilizer from my medical kit. Bring me the whole damn kit, fuck.”

“You shot him,” James says again. Blinks, scrambles to action. Fuck, Sam thinks, fuck, because yeah, he did, he just—he shot Captain America, what the fuck—

“I've seen enough spy movies to know when someone's using trigger phrases,” he says, not looking up; holding Steve's brachial artery closed and actually watching it heal in front of him. “Did you know? That you were a sleeper agent?”

“Nothing sleeper about it,” James says tightly. Draws a measure of sedative into a hypodermic, squinting at the vial. “How many CCs?”

“We tested a hundred milligrams on you, so…” 

“Right,” James says. Taps the needle, injects it gently into Steve's jugular. “Let's hope that doesn't kill him, Christ. What do you need?”

“Suturing is gonna be a pain in the ass,” Sam says, “gimme the medical adhesive, I'll glue this up. If those weren't sleeper triggers then what the fuck were they, J, and how did he know them?”

“Hydra operant conditioning. I… they wiped me, before every mission. The operant phrase made sure I was ready to comply.”

Sam's phone rings, startlingly loud: Natasha. “Nat,” he says, putting her on speaker, “what’s up?”

“You need to get out,” she says urgently. “You need to leave, both of you, right now. The strike team is three minutes away, sorry I didn't warn you earlier, I was shut out of the system. I think they know I've been working with you.”

“Then there's a strike team coming at you right now too,” Sam says, and down the phone Natasha makes one of her dismissive noises.

“I'm on it,” she says, “I can handle myself, but you need to go right now, Sam, or there'll be nothing I can do.”

“I shot Captain America,” Sam says. There's a long pause. 

“Is he down?”

“Unconscious. James has questions for him, we can't just—”

“Two minutes out,” she says. “If you don't get out in the next thirty seconds you'll lose your window.”

“We gotta go,” Sam tells James. Reaches for his go-bag; thank God James had never let them slip on it, get too comfortable to leave everything behind in the space of a single minute. Shoves every file on their kitchen table into it, hoping they haven't left anything lying around the rest of the house: no need to give Hydra more of a head start on how much they know. “Nat, are our covers blown? Can we use the passports you got us, or do we have to fly under the radar?”

“You're good,” Natasha says; out of breath, like she's running. “I used my own guy, outside the system. Now, Sam, move.”

“J, we gotta go, you have to leave him—”

“Who was he working with,” James gets out. Shoulders his own bag, kicks the rim of the shield so that it flips up for him to catch in one smooth movement; you've got first-hand experience with the shield, Sam thinks. By now it's hardly a surprise. “Nat, who was his handler?”

“Alexander Pierce,” she says, line crackling, and James clenches his jaw, nods tightly.

“We'll see you in seventy-two hours,” he tells her. Already moving, hand on Sam's lower back and pushing him out the front door. “Deep cover protocol. Good luck.”

“I don't need luck,” Natasha says. “I'm very good at my job,” and the line goes dead; time to go.

 

James won't talk about it for hours: just moves them both with brutal efficiency. A motorbike through the jungle until they hit the railway tracks, and then a jump, dangerously high, from an overbridge onto the roof of a freight train. It winds Sam so much he almost slips; James grabs his hand, hauls him back up to safety.

“End of the carriage,” he hisses, “we drop down onto the coupling, get in through the side loading door. You see anyone, don't hesitate, okay? Now, quick, before we hit this tunnel.”

There's nobody in the freight car, thank Christ, just a stack of crates, sacks of rice. Sam pushes a crate out to cover them, settles down behind it. Tries to catch his breath. “You think Nat got out?” he asks eventually, and James shrugs.

“Guess we'll find out,” he says, “if she makes it to Vientiane.”

“Do you think,” Sam starts. Has to pause, to take a breath. “Do you think Steve is okay?”

“Oh, Rogers ain't gonna die on us, he's too much of an asshole for that,” James says. Smiles, a brief flicker of emotion across his face. “If he didn't die of fuckin’ pneumonia or scarlet fever back in the 20s he'll survive a couple of bullets now. But—” His face goes tight, muscle ticking in his jaw, mouth one straight and unhappy line. “Pierce must have got to him. The things he was saying, it's the same shit Pierce used to say to me. You shaped the century. There's no way Steve would have done it willingly, he must have—”

“Been brainwashed,” Sam murmurs. “The same way they did to you.”

“I should have known,” James says, “I should have—they lost their asset when I got out, Steve would have been too useful a tool to leave alone. Perfect cover: Captain fucking America, agent of SHIELD. Hydra could have worked in plain sight.”

 

“Bucky,” Sam says hours later: bored of sitting in a dark freight car, playing I-Spy where every answer is a sack of rice. “I gotta say, J, I thought that was a weird nickname when I saw it on the Smithsonian website, but he really does call you that, what the fuck. It doesn't even rhyme with Buchanan.”

“It's weird,” James agrees. “I don't even remember how it started. He's been calling me that since we were both kids, I'm kind of surprised it didn't stick with me after—”

“You want me to switch?” Sam asks, “want me to start calling you Bucky instead of James?”

James looks like he's contemplating the question for a solid minute. “Nah,” he says eventually. “I dunno. Maybe. It'll get pretty old if Steve keeps trying to kill me, though.”

 

Natasha must have gotten to Vientiane first: plane tickets in the dead drop, a long-haul to Bucharest, and Sam's got no goddamn clue why she's headed to Eastern Europe but it's not like they can stay this side of the world much longer.

“Bathroom,” Sam says, looking at James; “you gotta change your shirt, you're covered in blood,” and it turns out Sam's filthy with it too: dry under his fingernails, flaking rusty on his wrists and forearms. They scrub themselves clean in the train station bathroom, fresh clothes from the go-bag and the old ones trashed. It was Sam's favorite t-shirt, he thinks resentfully; heathered grey, worn soft and comfortable, and although they've kept their go-bags packed he doesn't have anything near warm enough for winter in fucking Romania.

James falls asleep on the plane. It should be unsurprising after the way the last twenty-four hours have been one long adrenaline ride, except that Sam's personally witnessed James refuse to sleep for a solid three days when he's been spooked into getting back on the run. Natasha didn't even book them business class; they're crammed into bullshit economy seats that feel even tinier than when Sam last flew commercial, James’ thighs slanted sideways so his knees aren't shoved into someone else's back.

“Excuse me,” Sam asks, leaning forward, “could you move your seat up?” The passenger in front of him doesn't even bother to take out their headphones: just gives him a withering look, pulls down their eyemask. Reclines their seat a little further. “Fuck you too,” Sam mutters, and against his shoulder James stirs.

“Wassamatter?”

“Nothing. You're good.”

There's nothing he could do anyway, in the middle of a transcontinental flight. No guns, no knives, the shield shoved in a duffel bag and put through checked luggage, although Sam's willing to bet James has his favorite bowie knife strapped somewhere it'd get missed by the metal detectors already screaming about his arm. “Sorry,” he'd said, ducking his head, grinning sweet and shy, “always sets them off, I got so much metal in my spine the machine must think I'm a robot. Got the paperwork here about it.” Natasha's work, obviously, a medical exemption, advanced prosthetics; the airport security staff had barely glanced at it, just nodded very politely and waved him through. 

“Excuse me, sir,” the flight attendant says quietly, startling him. “Would your husband like a blanket? A pillow?”

“Oh—” Sam says, blinking; “yeah, that—thanks, that's great.”

“Have a good flight, sir,” she tells him. Smiles, eyes softening when she glances at James asleep and actually drooling a little on Sam's shirt. Sam tries to slide the pillow under his head—unsuccessful, James muttering in his sleep again and settling even more heavily against Sam—and in the end he just jams it behind his own neck, drapes the thin blanket over them both and closes his eyes like maybe if he pretends hard enough he'll trick his own brain into doing something about it.

 

He must sleep eventually, although maybe that makes it worse; they stumble out into Henri Coandă International groggy and disoriented, the particular combination of hydrocarbons and snowy European air startlingly unfamiliar after so long in tropical heat. Someone whistles, sharp, from the taxi stand: Natasha, hair bleached blonde and cut to her chin, driving a beat-up nineties sedan.

“Need a ride? It's ten miles to Bucharest proper. Figured I wouldn't make you take the bus.”

“We've been flying for like twenty hours,” Sam says, yawning so hard his jaw threatens to dislocate. “Tell me you have coffee. Or food. Or a real bed.”

“I mean, there's a mattress,” Natasha shrugs. “But food, we can do.” She passes Sam a paper cup as he slides into the back seat; shitty coffee, almost cold, but Sam nearly cries about it anyway. James gets into the front seat, an unspoken agreement between the two of them; “James,” Natasha says, tone shifting down a pitch to carefully neutral.

“Natasha,” he replies, equally flat in affect, and then switches to Russian, a conversation Sam gets none of. They've done this before; Sam still hates it.

“I'm right here,” he snaps, less scope for tolerance than usual, and Natasha makes apologetic eye contact in the rear view mirror as she navigates them through a complicated Otopeni intersection.

“I'm sorry,” James says. “I didn't mean to cut you out, sweetheart, I was just telling her about the operant conditioning. Asking if the same thing happened to her.”

“The trigger phrases were Russian,” Sam remembers. “Did that mean anything?”

“Nonsense words,” James shrugs, but his shoulders are still set with tension. “Maybe they meant something once. Zhelaniye, what is that, ‘desire’?”

“Longing,” Natasha says. Shifts gear, changes lane. “It's not that the words meant something. It's the words being in Russian that meant something.”

“I was created by the Soviets,” James says. “And then they sold me or traded me to America, or lost me when the USSR collapsed. Hydra all along, I guess, just different cells, different accents. But I didn't think Pierce had the trigger phrases. They have the machine. The cryo chamber. But the words—only the Russians knew those.”

“There'd be people from those days,” Natasha says. “Easy enough to track them down. Fuck, if it's anything like we were in the 50s with smart German scientists, half of them probably work for us now.”

“And when Hydra lost me too,” James says, “realized I could break conditioning with one solid knock on the head and enough time out of cryo, no wonder they tried to get better ways to get back in my mind. Fuck. Fuck.”

 

The safe house is a piece of shit; it's almost comforting, Sam thinks, it's reassuring to know that the continent might change but he's still gonna be stuck in a goddamn tenement apartment with no amenities for the rest of time. Newspaper on the windows, mattress and sleeping bags in the corner, Sam's been in fucking caves that feel homier. There's another woman there already: dark hair, military bearing, sitting at the kitchen table and carefully field-stripping an assault rifle. 

James stops short in the doorway. “Who's this?” he says, tired and suspicious. Natasha shoves his shoulder. Shakes out her hand, wincing; Sam's made the same mistake more than once.

“Maria Hill,” she says. “Don't be an asshole, Barnes, Maria's solid. We got out together, I sold her on the concept that she might get to shoot Rumlow if she plays her cards right and beats me in rock-paper-scissors.”

“Good to meet you,” Maria says, rising to shake their hands. Sam doesn't fail to see the way that Natasha looks at her when she thinks nobody's looking, or the way that Maria's gaze flicks across them like she's assessing for a report being written inside her own brain.

“You can put your stuff down over there,” Natasha tells them; waves vaguely at the corner, and when James drops the duffel bag with an audible clunk, narrows her eyes. “Is that—Barnes, seriously, you stole his shield? You took the Captain America shield through commercial checked luggage?”

“What was I supposed to do,” James asks, “leave it there?”

“Love that energy for us,” Maria says. “Great move. No flaws.”

“Oh, so now I'm the unreasonable one. Is he here yet?” Natasha says, and Maria shakes her head.

“An hour away, maybe. You want me to go get us some food?”

“Barnes can probably speak Romanian,” Natasha suggests, “he could go,” and James glares at her.

“Nah, he's on the top of SHIELD’s radar right now, you know Fury would be mad if we got him all the way here only to have some third-rate Romanian hit squad get off a lucky shot. It's fine, I read Lonely Planet on the way. It even had a recommended dumpling shop, I've been hanging out for pierogi ever since I found out we were heading to central Europe.”

“Colțunași,” James says, “not pierogi, we're not in Poland,” and Natasha pauses where she's filling the old stovetop kettle.

“See,” she says, “I said you could speak Romanian, right?”

“Fuck you,” James says tiredly, the same irritated fondness Sam might have brought to any dumb argument with his own sister. “Let's eat before I decide it'd be easier to just let myself get taken out by that third-rate hit squad after all.”

 

Whether they're pierogi or the Romanian equivalent, Maria brings back a ton of them, along with a box of anonymously European lager and a packet of cigarettes. “What?” she says, when she catches Natasha looking; “if I'm gonna help you fight Nazi terrorists we thought we defeated in World War Two, I'm gonna have a smoke first, okay?”

“Yeah, you make a compelling point, gimme one.”

It should be weird, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking beer, eating potato dumplings, bickering over whether smoking inside is disgusting or acceptable, while simultaneously planning or failing to plan how to take down a covert terrorist organization.

“They're moving to launch Project Insight,” Maria says. “Ahead of schedule, pushing up the go-live date by months. I think you bombing Camp Lehigh probably gave them super-willies about someone being onto their agenda.”

“What was in Camp Lehigh?” Sam asks, “isn't that in New Jersey?”

“Old boot camp from back in World War Two. Fun trivia alert, it’s where Steve trained before they did the whole zap-zap superhero thing. Also, where they'd backed up Arnim Zola on this incredibly creepy magnetic tape deal. I tracked it down after our last briefing, what James remembered about his movements after the war ended.” Natasha pauses to eat another dumpling; wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, finishes her beer. “We gotta figure out how to take Insight down or we're fucked, that's the end-game here. Only problem is, it's Director-level restricted, and I didn't exactly have enough time to finish hacking the files before the whole trying to kill me thing started.”

“Fury will have it,” Maria says, calm and sure; Sam envies that level of confidence. “He'll be here any minute.”

James exhales; when Sam glances at him, it's to see that his jaw is tight, eyes hard. “Sorry,” he says, low, contained, “anyone want to fill us in on what the fuck Project Insight is?”

“Hydra’s plan for a worldwide police state. Surveillance that'll make the current technology look like a bunch of tin cans on string, orbital missiles that can carry out targeted strikes about a million times better than the drone program. Three next-generation Helicarriers synced to a network of targeting satellites, and an algorithm that'll assess and eliminate anyone who threatens their new world order.”

“So, bad,” Sam says, and Natasha laughs out loud.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “yeah, pretty fucking bad.”

 

James is already suspicious, wary of the new additions to their team of three, and Sam can see that he's working hard to keep it under check when Fury shows up.

“Director of SHIELD,” Fury says, shaking Sam's hand. “Assuming they haven’t gotten around to revoking my title just yet, anyway. So you're the guy that shot Captain America.”

“In my defence,” Sam says, “he was kind of brainwashed by Nazis, and also he didn't die. He didn't die, right?”

“Nah, he's good. In Pierce’s pocket, though, nothing I can do about that. That man turned down a Nobel Peace Prize, for fuck’s sake, it's shit like this that gives me trust issues.”

“Maria says they've moved up the Insight timeline to launch,” Natasha says. “Tell me you've got a way for us to stop that happening, Nick.”

“Oh, I'm Nick now, huh? Yeah, I've got something in my back pocket. We might be able to pull it off, if we're the luckiest idiots in the world.”

The plan is not great. “I kind of feel like that's an understatement,” Sam says, once Fury’s laid it out: three helicarriers, three computer chips to switch out, a launch sequence to abort, and then on top of that Fury's gonna pull this whole other thing with Alexander Pierce. “This plan is a goddamn shitshow.”

“You're not wrong,” Fury agrees. “But these might help.” Leans down, unzips his duffel bag and pulls out—

“Wait,” Sam says. “Wait, are these—are these my wings?”

“New and improved,” Fury says. “Emphasis on improved, Stark got a look at the schematics and you can never stop that guy from tinkering, but apparently this model has ballistic impact resistance, he seemed pretty set on me passing that detail on.”

“I'm sorry,” Sam says, blinking, “you're telling me Iron Man redesigned my wings?”

“Property of the government, technically,” Fury says. “Kind of a technicality, given we're about to commit treason, so yeah, sure, they're yours. Don't make me regret it.”

 

There's one aspect of the plan they haven't covered. Sam looks at James, knows he's thinking it, but it's Natasha who clears her throat, lays her palms flat on the table.

“He'll use the trigger phrases again,” she says. “You know he will.”

“Yeah, I know. I've been thinking about it. There's one way I think we can avoid it being a problem, but I'll be honest, sweetheart, I don't think you're going to like it much.”

James’ plan is to trigger the operant conditioning in advance, put James into the Winter Soldier state so that Steve can't override his programming. “You're right,” Sam says flatly. “I hate it. What other options do we have?”

Natasha looks thoughtful. “Do you remember the whole phrase?” she asks, tapping the rim of her beer bottle against her teeth. “In the right order? You're confident you haven't forgotten any?”

“Yeah, I'm sure,” James says. “Extremely sure, it's kind of hard to forget once you're reminded.”

“Why are we still talking about this plan like it's a plan? We're not turning you back into the Soldier. It's not—there has to be another way.”

“He's gonna get in my head,” James says. “One way or the other. I'd rather he didn't hold all the cards.”

“Won't he try…” Sam starts. Chews the inside of his cheek, thinking about the problem. “I mean, he's known you since you were a kid, right, will your old memories be a problem? Is that likely to break you out of the operant state regardless of what we do beforehand?”

James tilts his head. “Maybe,” he concedes. “It's a risk. Which is why you're gonna be the one triggering the Winter Soldier. You know me better than anyone. Steve knew me, but you know me now, sweetheart, that's got to count for something.”

Sam catches Natasha's eyebrows shoot to her hairline before she sees him noticing, smoothes her face back into neutral. She's known already, she must have known, but Sam guesses there's something different about laying all their cards out on the table like this. 

“Absolutely not,” he says. Knows, even as he's saying it, that the argument is lost; if this is the only way to keep James safe, to keep all the details of their life together locked down in the back of his mind until this shit ends, there's no way he'd do anything else.

 

The code phrase is Russian; they know that already, but it's different when Sam has to learn the words, tongue tripping over alien syllables. James has written them down, his precise handwriting no less familiar for being in Cyrillic, and Natasha transcribes the pronunciation so that Sam can read the words as clearly as possible.

“You better not be memorizing these,” he says to her, “if you ever—”

“Relax,” she drawls, “trust me,” and maybe Sam shouldn't but he does.

“I'm just saying,” he says, “you try to use this against him and I'll rat your crush out to Maria,” and after a startled silence Natasha actually laughs out loud.

“Steve will still try to break the conditioning,” James murmurs to Sam later: just before they begin, a moment between them that Sam's pretty sure everyone else in the room is visibly and deliberately not paying attention to. “You'll have to keep the comms line open, make sure he's not getting to me. And if he is—”

“I'll talk you down,” Sam says. “Remind you you're mine.”

“Christ,” James mutters, rolling his eyes, but his cheeks are a little pink, flushed like he's embarrassed or pleased or both. “Yeah, Sam, you—you do that.”

They don't say I love you before they start; no last words, no difficult farewells. “Let's fuckin’ do this shit,” James says, squaring his jaw, “I'll see you on the other side, okay?” and then they're ready, all of them, game plan laid out and armor on and knowing without saying out loud that they're probably all gonna die.

 

The dumbest part of the plan, maybe, is that having flown across the world to Bucharest, they have to get back in a cloaked Quinjet and turn around again. They get a few hours of sleep, at least: bickering over who gets the mattress before James says, I’m a hundred years old, I think I got the age privilege here. Then it’s back into the air, an under-the-radar flight where all ten hours are filled with last minute prep, trying to iron out details and account for everything that’ll inevitably go horribly wrong the moment they hit the ground. 

Things get off to an okay start. Maria heads up to the control level so she can get access to the systems, and Sam drops James and Natasha onto each of the helicarriers, swearing at the weight.

It's your goddamn arm, he wants to tell James, before I even met you I was trying to figure out your whole weird deal and it turns out, someone with a metal arm and plates in their spine weighs around fifty pounds more than they ought to, but James is locked away safe and the only person Sam's got is the Soldier, eyes just as coolly gray as they were that first goddamn day in the desert.

“We're in,” he says instead, comms to Maria, “we'll let you know once we're locked,” and there's a staccato round of gunfire crackling from her end before she says, Roger that.

The ground to air missiles are popping off, RPGs just like Sam's last flight, and he's already in evasive maneuvers when he hears Steve via James’ comm line.

“Bucky, please—”

“Who the hell is Bucky,” James—the Soldier—says, and then Sam loses the conversation, missiles exploding way too close for comfort. He tucks his wings in, twists out of range before another two missiles reach him; God he's missed flying like this. 

By the time he can focus on the comms again, it's to hear Steve, his voice desperate: “you know me,” he says, “you've known me your whole life,” and Sam hears James growl with frustration.

“No I don't,” he snaps: the sound of a punch, brutal hand-to-hand, ringing metal that must be the shield. A yell of pain, and Sam winces; incapacitate, he'd told the Soldier, do not kill, but he knows first-hand how much room that leaves when it's someone like Steve in the ring.

“Alpha lock,” Natasha says then; “Sam, do you read me? What's your status?”

“Think you could do anything about these goddamn missiles? They're making it kind of hard to get where I need to be.”

“On it,” Natasha says, “gimme a second, the great thing about aircraft carriers is they've got a bunch of aircraft,” and a few seconds later Sam spots the fighter jet lifting off the first Helicarrier. “How do you wanna play this?” she asks, and Sam swoops up, draws fire.

“Take them out at the ground or shoot them out of the sky, I just need you to keep them off me until I can get in.”

“Roger,” Natasha says, and for a brief minute it's like Riley's back, Sam's wingman up there while they're running the kind of mission you'd have to be crazy to say yes to; his eyes sting with it and he swallows it down, focuses on the task at hand.

“Soldier,” he says down the comms line. “Report.”

“In progress,” James says, clipped and harsh. “Hostile still engaged.”

That's not great, but it's better than it could be; James hasn't broken programming, is holding his own against Steve, and now that Natasha's dealing with all the goddamn missiles Sam's able to drop down into the second carrier, switch the chips.

“Bravo lock,” he says. “Soldier, I'm coming to you.” 

When he gets to the third helicarrier, it's to find James and Steve facing off, James barely able to hold the shield up enough to protect himself from the bullets Steve's firing. Sam comes in hard; kicks Steve, putting all his weight into it, and it's enough to knock him down, give James time to regroup.

“Broke my arm,” James says briefly; they'd discussed, too, how to make it so that the Soldier would volunteer injuries, since Sam had been entirely confident it was something he'd otherwise be programmed to avoid at all costs. He's grateful now for that foresight, for being able to do what he can to keep James safe. “I'm still operational. Fifteen percent impaired.”

“Got it,” Sam says, “give me the chip, keep him busy. He's less likely to kill you than me.”

“I don't want to hurt you,” Steve says, staggering to his feet. “You're my friend, Bucky.”

“And you're my mission,” the Soldier says, eyes like flint. This sucks, it fucking sucks, it's a pile of hot garbage; Sam might not be Steve's biggest fan given how he keeps trying to kill him, but Steve's face is stricken, pain in his voice every time James denies him, and Sam can't help but hurt for him.

“Sam,” Maria says, “they're initiating the algorithm, you gotta get that chip now or we're fucked.”

“I'm on it,” Sam says. “One second.” Takes the chip, pushes himself up toward the control deck, and then he's being yanked backward, hitting the ground hard and painful. A hook in one wing, ripping it right off, and again Sam remembers Riley tumbling out of the sky.

“No!” James shouts, “no—you can't—” and drops the shield, tackles Steve to the ground. “Go,” he grits out, “I've got this, go,” and Sam can't wait to see whether that's true; he disconnects the other wing, jumps desperately at the metal railing and regrets every minute he's spent in the last two years not doing chin-ups. A gun fires below him: a bullet grazing the outside of his thigh, sudden and shocking, hot like a brand, but he drags himself up anyway, climbs the last inch of the way. Fumbles with the interface, fingers clumsy, heart hammering in his throat; every second feeling like a thousand years. Shoves the chip in place. “Charlie lock.”

“I got you,” Maria says. “That should—yeah, recalculating, but you need to get out of there now, Sam, or you'll get taken down too.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. Glances below; Steve and James are still grappling, desperate and bloody, and then as Sam watches Steve flips up the shield, smacks James in the face. “Fuck,” Sam says, “oh, fuck, Jesus, no,” and James is limp, unconscious, terrifyingly still. 

Sam still has his gun; he's not even thinking about it as he aims and fires. No med kit this time, no guarantee that he'll be able to hold Steve together until his own body heals miraculously quick, but all Sam can think about is James: don't die, he thinks, god, don't you fucking dare die now. “Fire,” he says, “Maria, hit the button, do it,” and jumps down, landing heavily. Hard on your joints, James says in his mind, the superhero landing. We're all gonna need knee replacements by the time we hit forty. “Natasha, you better be nearby, we need an extraction right now.”

“I can't see you,” Natasha says, “you're gonna have to jump, I'll catch you,” and the first missiles are firing, the air thick and hot.

“James,” Sam says, desperate. Hands on James’ face, checking his pulse. “James, come on, are you with me?”

“Fuck, that hurt,” James says, wincing, and Sam's breath catches like a sob in his throat.

“We gotta—” he says, and although James must still be dizzy with pain, half-unconscious, he assesses the situation in about half a second. Kicks the shield up onto his metal arm, pulls Sam in close and grabs Steve.

“Hang on,” he says, “fuck, my arm,” and then he's launching them straight at the edge of the deck, the fractured pane of glass, the shield breaking their fall as they plummet out of the exploding helicarrier and down toward the Potomac.

“Got you,” Natasha says, and just as Sam's bracing for impact they're tumbling into the open side of her fighter jet, grabbing at anything in their way to slow the momentum.

“Ow,” James says, breathing hard; “fuck, let's not do that again, okay?” and Sam knows he should be doing something about keeping Captain goddamn America alive again given he's apparently making a habit of shooting him, but all he can do is lie there, winded and wheezing, until James rolls over to kiss him.

 

They save the world; defeat Hydra, and Steve Rogers doesn't die after all, although it's apparently a close call. Sam doesn't see him for a few days, isn't really sure how he feels about that whole thing, but he's sitting one morning in the probably-top-secret upstate lake house, drinking his coffee and enjoying the dawn quiet, when Steve shuffles out still looking bruised and a more than a little exhausted.

“Oh,” he says, “sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.”

“No, it's cool. James is still asleep, though, you would not believe how bad he is at mornings.”

“I, uh,” Steve says.”I was actually hoping I could talk to you.”

“Oh,” Sam says; surprised, maybe. “Sure, take a seat. You want a coffee?”

“I'm good. Don't get up.” Steve settles down next to Sam, wincing; Sam can relate, given how he apparently broke at least one rib falling out of the helicarrier and his thigh is still killing him. Even so, he thinks—

“Hey, man, sorry I shot you.”

“It's okay,” Steve says. “You were protecting Bucky. I'm glad you did.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “I was, but—”

“He told me about you,” Steve says. “About Afghanistan, how you found him. How you put your life on the line ever since.”

“It's not James’ fault that Hydra was trying to kill me just for seeing his face,” Sam shrugs. “And he was doing it for me, just as much.”

“He's happy,” Steve says, “I can tell,” and there's something in the tone of his voice, the wistful twist of his mouth, that gives Sam pause.

“You know he remembers you, right?” he says. “That whole thing… we had to put him into the Soldier state so it couldn't be used against him, but when it's him, when it's J, he knows you, I promise.”

Steve is quiet for a while; he must have known that already, but his face goes through a journey of emotions, fraught and complex. “When I woke up,” he says eventually, “when I came out of the ice, I thought everyone who knew me was gone.”

“Sounds lonely,” Sam murmurs, and Steve laughs, painful like he's holding back a sob.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah.”

“Well, if you need a wingman,” Sam says. “Or a friend. I might know a guy.”

“I'd like that,” Steve says. Wipes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“But you gotta promise me one thing,” Sam adds, “the only sticking point with James is he still doesn't have a lick of taste when it comes to music, and I'm not letting you into the team if the two of you are gonna play nothing but swing bands instead of learning to appreciate Motown.” That makes Steve laugh again, easier this time; it's nice, Sam thinks. It could be nice.

 

“So,” James says, yawning, when Sam finally gets tired of waiting for him to get out of bed and goes to bother him instead. Sips the coffee he’s stolen from Sam. “What's the plan, sweetheart?”

“Oh, it's up to me now, huh?”

“We're not on the run anymore,” James shrugs. “I'm delegating. Giving you the wheel for a bit.”

“Guess I can't argue with that. Well, I kind of committed us to signing up as regular-ass superheroes, so I hope that's cool with you.”

“Wait, you what?”

“Steve seemed like he needed a team in his corner,” Sam says. “So I sort of told him he could count on us? Not, like, tomorrow. Just in general.”

“You're a good man, Sam Wilson,” James murmurs, and Sam laughs: a little embarrassed.

“I did shoot him twice,” he adds. “I kind of feel like I owe him on that one, you know?”

“Sure,” James says. “So if that's not tomorrow, then what is?”

“We're not internationally wanted fugitives anymore, apparently,” Sam says. “So I thought, maybe… Do you want to come down to Delacroix with me?”

James is quiet for a minute, mouth soft. “Where your sister lives,” he says, “where you grew up,” and Sam nods.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure that if I don't go visit Sarah as soon as I can then she's entirely within her rights to murder me herself, given how I've been missing presumed dead for like two years now. And I—I want you to meet her, J.”

“Yes,” James says, “yeah, of course, I'd, Jesus, Sam, you know I'd—” and he can't even finish, just fumbles his coffee cup onto the bedside table, yanks Sam down into a kiss.

God, Sam thinks; god, he's so fucking lucky, he's maybe half a superhero and apparently he saved the world and none of that matters compared to the life he’s got with James. And perhaps it started in the desert but Sam's pretty sure now: this is where the rest of their lives begin.

 

Notes:

"how did you take down captain america?"
Sam: I shot him in the kneecaps because his shield is the size of a dinner plate and he's an idiot

comment if you think Steve continues to call James 'Bucky' and Sam makes a face about it every single time