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1.
Barnes doesn't get caught. He's too good to get caught; he's the arm of HYDRA, the Winter Soldier, a ghost and a boogieman and the thousand other things he's been called in the news reports that play in the lobbies of the hotels he stays in and the newspapers deposited in front of his rooms in the morning.
But Captain America is none of those things, and Captain America gets caught.
It happens fast. Barnes planned to be in and out, finding the information he's looking for and gone before anyone even knows he's there in the confusion, but the alarm goes off and he has to pull his flash drive from the computers before all the files have transferred. He cuts through the rooms being used for storage but they're already there, six agents and the two intruders and one shield.
The intruders are expected; the agents aren't unexpected, but they aren't ideal; the shield gives him pause, even though he doesn't want it to. He doesn't know how they retrieved it from the bottom of the Potomac, but on the other hand, he supposes there are more important things to deal with now, especially seeing as the HYDRA agents are currently firing on Captain America and the Falcon.
Barnes ducks behind a table filled with equipment, he doesn't quite know what kind - it's the storage area of the base, tiny and disguised though it is, where HYDRA holds all the alien technologies and materials they brought out of SHIELD's reserves when they went public. He eases around the table to check on the battle. Captain America ducks bullets in improbable gymnastic maneuvers, and the Falcon returns fire with a gun of his own. They're holding their own, but they're outnumbered, and Captain America and the Falcon are falling back instead of moving forward - the HYDRA agents are spread out through the storage space and have more angles covered. Captain America is a formidable foe, but he's only one man, and the Falcon doesn't have the security of the super-soldier serum, either.
Barnes makes a decision without any conscious thought, and pulls his own gun from its holster strapped to his thigh. He vaults over the table and takes out one agent with a neat headshot, the one whose aim is the best, but instantly loses the advantage of surprise. But he at least attracts the attention - and the aim - of three of the five remaining agents, who turn away from Captain America and the Falcon, and he manages to dispatch another one of them before moving behind a stack of crates waiting to be unloaded.
"Bucky?" he hears the incredulous shout, and ignores it. He looks around the crates but has to duck back immediately to avoid the gunfire - even his metal arm can't protect him from every bullet, and he's not indestructible. But one of the agents was headed towards the table, and at least some of the alien technology HYDRA took must be weaponry for them to be interested in it; if the agent gets it, there's no way of telling what it could do, and the chances of survival for anyone not HYDRA would drop dramatically.
The table is in his line of sight. He waits until he can see the HYDRA agent's shadow, and then takes a chance and tackles her, knocking the table over as well. This has the added benefit of working as a distraction, drawing the attention of the other three agents, and the Falcon manages to take one out as Captain America flings his shield at one of the others. It's getting messy, which Barnes doesn't like - his tendency is towards quiet assassinations, garrotes in alleyways and silenced gunshots in the dead of night, bloodstains on pillows and newspapers piling up in front of his victims' doors. But messy is just as bad for the HYDRA agents as it is for him, which means that it's good, in a way.
The agent he tackled reaches for the alien technology now scattered across the floor, her fingers groping for a small, amber gem skittering across the floor. If she wants it, he should want it too - it could be a weapon of some kind, or, knowing the kinds of alien technologies that HYDRA prefers generally, something even worse.
His arms are longer, and his fingers close around it while hers are still inches away. It's smooth against his palm, and strangely warm, like a rock that's been sitting in the sun. It looks like one, too, for that matter, and whatever kind of weapon it is, Barnes can't tell -
There's a gunshot, followed by a too-familiar choked gasp. Barnes sees the bright red sprayed across the wall before he sees the source. Captain America has a hand clasped against his neck, but the blood escapes through his fingers and out of the corner of his mouth, and after a moment he falls. A neatly round hole lays in the center of the halo of red on the wall behind him.
There's a roaring in Barnes's ears with no source, but he can't look away from the way the Captain's hand falls away from the wound on his neck, freeing the telltale gush of arterial spray; his other arm hits the ground first but doesn't break his fall at all, only impacting limply before the rest of him. Barnes knows full well what the blood coming from the Captain's mouth means: it wasn't just the artery that was severed, but his windpipe. The Captain will be breathing blood into his lungs -
"Steve!" the Falcon is shouting, but he has no cover, even with the gun in his hand he won't be able to get to the Captain, who has already lost enough blood that his eyes look at nothing in particular, eyelids sliding shut, and the regular gush of blood isn't spraying as far and the spurts are coming slower and slower -
The gem in his hand is warm, almost burning -
2.
Barnes wakes up as the newspaper hits the door of his motel room, a dulled thud of wood pulp on wood, and realizes that he's already sat up and pulled the pistol out from under his pillow. The alarm clock next to the bed reads 7:13.
This is the same room he's been staying in for the past three days, as the Captain and the Falcon have gotten closer and closer to the HYDRA cell here in small-town New Hampshire. He has no memory of returning to the motel after -
The shower of red. The smell of gunpowder and blood in the air. The meaty gasp of another hole being opened in the Captain's windpipe -
The newspaper arrived at 7:13 yesterday, too. It can't be a coincidence, but it can hardly be anything else.
He keeps the gun in his hand as he pulls himself out of the bed, disentangling himself from the sheets and comforter that inevitably swallow him each night. He has never remembered a dream before, so he can't rule out the possibility that that's what it was; on the other hand, if HYDRA found him in their base, they may well have erased certain memories if they thought it was in their best interests. Their technology is perfectly capable of it, which is only one of the reasons Barnes has been opting for secrecy in his fact-finding missions so far.
Everything in the room is precisely as it was yesterday, or perhaps in the dream, down to the alarm wires threaded across each window and door. The phone that Barnes pickpocketed from a tourist back in Washington (so useful, smartphones - pull one out and look at it and poke at it the right way, and no matter what street corner you're on, no one will question you) informs him that today is Friday.
It was Friday in the dream, too. At least, it must have been a dream.
He peers through the blinds of the motel room to look at the room across the parking lot. The Falcon climbs the stairway just to the left of the room he's watching, carrying two paper coffee cups, and as Barnes watches, the Falcon stacks them neatly and unlocks the door to the room, entering it quickly.
Just like he did yesterday. Today.
HYDRA has managed worse things than time-travel.
Captain America and the Falcon arrived at the HYDRA base at nine o'clock in the morning last time and surveilled it for half an hour before determining, incorrectly, that it was empty. Barnes, having tailed them, arrived at the same time and slipped in through the back as they caused a distraction in the front.
Barnes arrives at eight o'clock this time, the fastest he can get there and still be prepared. He is ill-equipped for a full-frontal close-combat assault - his grenades will damage him just as much as the lab in such confined quarters - so he goes in the back and steals an automatic off the first HYDRA agent he kills, so that he can steal compatible ammo from the others.
Then he does what he does best and starts cutting a swathe through the HYDRA base.
He can tell he's being sloppy even as he does it. His flesh-and-bone hand shakes, affecting his aim; he shoots as soon as he enters a room without even casing it; he punches too hard, inefficient, and the rush of hand-to-hand combat buoys away some of the strange pounding in his chest that keeps propelling him forward. He has no time to think about why he's doing it; the purpose is inscribed in him like a mission, go go go -
Until the magnetic cuff clicks around his metal wrist.
Combined with a well-placed kick to the back of his knee, it drives him to the floor, and once it snaps into contact with the metal plating, it keeps him there. The HYDRA agent kicks the gun from his hand and aims her own at him.
"A visit from the asset," she says. "This is unexpected. Are you working with Captain America now?"
Captain America hasn't attacked yet - how can they know -
She swings the butt of her gun towards his head, but he catches her wrist with his other hand and flips her. She falls to the floor but her gun clatters out of reach and he doesn't even see the other agents behind him until one of them hits him across the back of his head.
The blow is hard enough for his vision to gray out for a moment, and a second one follows it almost immediately, driving him all the way to the floor. He tries to push himself up, but one of the agents has a stun baton.
By the time they're done he's limp, his feet twitching with the aftereffects of the baton and unable to move, barely able to focus. Someone unclamps the cuff around his metal wrist and two more agents pull him up by the armpits and drag him backwards out of the room. As the roaring in his ears fades, he realizes that the staccato bursts above it were gunfire and he hears a familiar yell from the far end of the hallway -
"Sam! Get down!"
Captain America and the Falcon must be here, beyond the door. The agent who hit him first raises her gun and steps between him and the door, nodding to the other agents.
"Get him to the chair immediately. We'll take care of the other intruders."
The chair. Even through his fog, panic grips him.
The door bursts open and Captain America's shield follows immediately, striking three agents before returning to its owner. The Captain catches it easily and stays in motion, ducking behind the shield and rolling across the floor to the open door of a storage closet.
"Get the asset to the chair!" the first agent shouts again, and lays down cover fire in Captain America's direction.
"Bucky?" comes the incredulous yell from the storage closet, and Barnes realizes that the Captain hadn't seen him. But his mouth isn't working any more than his legs, and even his limp fingers twitch from the aftershocks of the baton -
The shield comes out from the storage closet, ricocheting off the far wall before knocking the gun out of the agent's hand. As it returns to the closet door, Captain America snatches it out of the air and throws it again, twisting his whole body in the air in the same motion to level a kick at the first agent's head. She falls into one of the agents flanking Barnes, and the shield takes out another, but one of the agents holding Barnes with his left hand takes out a pistol with his right and Barnes can't move, can't warn Captain America, can't do anything but watch -
The bullet gets Captain America in the eye, and he drops before Barnes has even a second to react -
3.
Barnes wakes up as the newspaper hits the door of his motel room, a dulled thud of wood pulp on wood, and realizes that he's already sat up and pulled the pistol out from under his pillow. The alarm clock next to the bed reads 7:13.
His muscles ache with the memory of electricity worming through them, and sitting up so quickly has made the points of impact on the back of his head throb.
He keeps the gun in his hand and goes to the window. Across the parking lot of the motel, the Falcon climbs the stairs to the second-floor room he and Captain America share.
So this time he waits. He waits, like he did the first time, until he sees the Falcon take the first duffel bag of gear out to the rented SUV, and waits until the Falcon goes back upstairs for the next round, like he did the first time, and slips down to his own vehicle.
He paces himself to match the first time through, weighing alternatives as he does. If the day resets when Captain America dies, then the mission is to save Captain America. A full-on assault won't work - the last iteration proved that - so alternate methods will have to be used. Barnes remembers the face of the HYDRA agent who killed Captain America the first time, and if Captain America doesn't see him this time and doesn't get distracted, then he may even survive this and let Barnes escape this day.
He goes in through the back, just like before. He kills every agent he comes across, just like before. He doesn't bother with the flash drive this time. Getting out of this is the only prize he wants now. But he waits by the computer terminal for the requisite minutes, since it was deviation that killed Captain America the last time.
Then he moves forward.
The difficult part will be keeping Captain America from seeing him. He's been following Captain America on these missions for the better part of a month, waiting for the Captain, the Falcon, and whichever of his new superhero teammates he decides to bring along to cause a noisy distraction while he sneaks in the back and steals the fragments of his past that were missing from HYDRA's files within SHIELD. But all that time, Captain America has been oblivious, and if the last two todays have shown anything, it's that he's incapable of adapting to surprises in a mission environment.
Barnes ducks behind the table in the storage room a few minutes early. His hands fill with nervous energy, which he attributes to the very real possibility of additional shock-stick attacks at any moment.
The unmistakable sound of a grenade in the distance echoes through the storage room. He grips his gun tighter and waits.
One of the side doors to the room slams open, and he hears the footsteps of five - no, six, it was six the first time - agents.
"He's here," says one. "This is our chokepoint, do you hear me? He's not finding another one of our labs - "
Through the various items and boxes on the shelves under the table, Barnes can see six sets of legs arranging themselves into firing positions, but the view of the door itself is obscured.
"Are we sure it's only Captain America and the Falcon?" says another agent, sounding nervous. Good.
"Surveillance confirmed it - only Captain America and the Falcon got into that car at their motel, and only Captain America and the Falcon got out of it when they parked in front of our building," says the first agent.
Surveillance. The motel is compromised - and somehow HYDRA has completely missed Barnes's presence. How focused must they be on Captain America and the Falcon to overlook -
Ambush, Barnes realizes. This is an ambush.
There's no time to do anything with that information. Captain America and the Falcon arrive with all their expected subtlety - which is to say, none. The shield, as always, precedes Captain America into the room, glancing off a wall in Barnes's field of vision, but there's a box filled with pieces of metal blocking his view of Captain America himself.
He leans forward to crouch and moves to the end of the table, staying low behind it and out of Captain America's sight. He kneecaps the only agent he can see and ignores the cry of pain, cut almost immediately off again with the shield's metal clang.
But he can remember so vividly the ruined pit of Captain America's eye, the burst red flesh and the deadened thump he made when he hit the ground, and the bloody wheezing the time before that, and part of him is convinced, just for a moment, that if he dares to look directly at Captain America that's what he'll see again - that all of this is just some kind of HYDRA trick and that Captain America really is dead, at least once if not twice over.
His hands shake harder.
He turns and stands, staying low, to get a better view of the situation, and if he happens to see Captain America's whole, intact head, then that's just a bonus and maybe he can duck back down before he's seen.
But Captain America's eyes meet his, the blue of his irises a clearer version of the blue of his helmet.
"Bucky - " Captain America begins, and a throwing knife embeds itself in his throat.
Barnes knows full well how the damage a knife can do differs from that of a bullet, and how fragile the neck is in general. The brain stem, for instance, is right at the back, and a well-thrown knife with enough force can sever it entirely in a single strike; from the way that the Captain drops instantly, from the Falcon's frantic scream of "Steve!", from the way that Barnes watches the light go out of his eyes -
4.
Barnes wakes up as the newspaper hits the door of his motel room, a dulled thud of wood pulp on wood, and realizes that he's already sat up and pulled the pistol out from under his pillow. The alarm clock next to the bed reads 7:13.
Barnes has been raiding HYDRA facilities to steal information back about himself for months now, but today, his fourth today, he has learned something on his own: he can get fucking sick of things.
He gets out of the bed and pulls on his holster before his shirt, and deposits the pistol in its place at the small of his back. The holster is more discreet than anything HYDRA would have given him but useful for moving about in public, as he discovered after stealing it off the body of a HYDRA agent who got in his way precisely once. Then he begins a pot of coffee and retrieves the staling other half of yesterday's bagel, chewing thoughtfully.
If HYDRA has prepared an ambush for Captain America and the Falcon at their lab, then maybe it's best if Captain America and Falcon never make it there.
He meanders to the window, looking at the cars in the parking lot. He knows which one is Captain America's.
And he has grenades.
Barnes swallows the last of his bagel, takes out his stolen smartphone, and dials 911.
"Hi, yeah," he says, his voice walking the line between ease and tension, "I'm at the Mountain Springs motel and I'm just looking out at the parking lot and, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm making any assumptions or anything, but there are some guys out there with shaved heads looking around at the cars and - again, I don't want to sound presumptuous - but I think they're carrying something with them and I thought I heard one of them say 'hail HYDRA' and I'm just a little concerned that - "
He ends the call mid-sentence, then proceeds out to the parking lot. Nobody sees him plant the grenades underneath the car three spots over from Captain America's.
He's back in his room by the time it spectacularly explodes, breaking windows all around the motel - including his own - and setting half the cars in the lot on fire, including Captain America's.
Maybe he shouldn't have used all the grenades.
The police respond quicker than he would have hoped. Captain America and the Falcon linger in the outdoor, second-floor walkway in front of their room, watching the parking lot and the response and searching the environment for signs of what might be happening. They don't notice Barnes, though. Barnes is too good for that.
Destroying their car directly would have made them even more suspicious, but just as Barnes had hoped, doing this had made them just as confused. Barnes watches as the Falcon puts a hand on Captain America's arm and tilts his head back towards the room, then gestures at the police cars parking along the motel's lot with their flashers on. Barnes can practically hear his rationalization: let me handle this, you know what they're going to do when they realize Captain America is here, they can't handle the headache you'd bring them if they knew.
Captain America glances around the motel one more time, then nods tiredly, going back inside. The Falcon absently touches his pants pocket, the left front one, and then heads for the stairs.
Now Barnes knows where the Falcon keeps his room key. That might be helpful.
The motel's other occupants also come outside and strike up conversations with the police, some of them - Barnes can tell from the expansive gestures towards ruined cars - heated. But the police direct them back into their rooms, keeping the situation contained -
Contained. Contained, not evacuated.
Barnes looks again at the police cars. They're parked blocking the entrances to the parking lot, with clear lines of sight to three of the sides of the motel, and additional officers could easily be placed at the back to keep anyone from leaving. And if there are so many police cars - at least seven, by Barnes's count - there should be at least one fire truck by now. The fires themselves are burning unabated in the cars in the parking lot.
And the Falcon still hasn't come outside. Either he's taking a very long time in the stairwell, or he's already dead.
Barnes doesn't bother with the door to his room, but leaps through the empty ruined hole where his window was. He's on the other side of the motel's U-shape from the Captain's room but on the same floor, and he's been watching this whole time. Nobody's gone in or out, he reminds himself as he sprints the long way around the motel. Nobody could have -
But a sniper could have. When Barnes kicks open the door, he sees the brain matter and bone shards spilled on the carpet like a tipped-over glass of wine, sees the neat hole in the back of Captain America's head, a dark circle surrounded by golden hair spattered with red.
He thinks, no -
5.
Barnes wakes up as the newspaper hits the door of his motel room, a dulled thud of wood pulp on wood, and realizes that he's already sat up and pulled the pistol out from under his pillow. The alarm clock next to the bed reads 7:13.
He throws the pistol down on the mattress. It bounces. He didn't turn the safety off. That's probably good.
He puts his head in his hands for a long moment, his fingers snagging through his hair. If he goes to HYDRA, Captain America dies and the day restarts. If he doesn't go to HYDRA, Captain America dies and the day restarts. Keeping Captain America alive should be easy, the inverse of what he spent so many years doing without the freedom to make decisions for himself, but now that he has choices he only seems to make the wrong ones, over and over and over again.
A symptom. He is dealing with a symptom. Captain America keeps dying and the day keeps restarting because something is making it happen, other than Barnes's inability to keep him alive. This is an effect, and there must be a cause.
The gem. The orange gem. The HYDRA agent reached for it and it glowed; it must have been some sort of failsafe but he doesn't have any time to do the kind of research to figure out what the hell it is, not with his resources.
But if he had access to better resources - the Avengers' resources - things might be different.
Barnes pulls himself out of the bed and goes to the window. The Falcon is walking towards the stairwell to get coffee for himself and Captain America. Barnes doubts he'll know anything. HYDRA's dossier on him made it clear that he, like Captain America, has the mind of a soldier rather than a spy. But he might know someone who does.
He waits for the Falcon to come back up the stairs with the coffee. The stairs are good stairs, just the kind of stairs he likes, solid concrete layered close enough that there's no seeing up or down through them and railings low enough to jump over without breaking anything, with two flights and a landing between each level. He waits on the landing one flight up from where the Falcon will emerge, and listens. The echoes are wonderful, and he can hear every footfall for each of the sixteen steps up as the Falcon comes up.
When the Falcon passes in front of his stairwell, Barnes says, "Hey."
The Falcon turns to look, the motion distracting him from the Tazer Barnes has aimed at him.
It's been helpful in the past that not everyone realizes that some Tazers have projectile clips with a range of about fifteen feet, and this is no exception. The Falcon fits neatly in the oversized rolling duffel bag that Barnes keeps just for this purpose, and it doesn't take long - or any more equipment than Barnes keeps with him at all times - to tie him to the desk chair in Barnes's room. The Falcon's head is already lolling as Barnes finishes securing the ties. Good. There's not much time.
"Samuel Wilson," Barnes says. "Codename 'the Falcon.'"
Wilson looks up, squinting one eye and rapidly blinking. "James Buchanan Barnes," he says back, his voice creaky. He looks down, taking in his hands tied to the armrests. "If you know who I am, then you know who I'm here with," he says.
"I'm not here about that," Barnes says. "I have some questions for you."
"He said you remembered who you are, on the Helicarrier," Wilson continues, his voice level. "He said you saved him."
Barnes crouches in front of Wilson, interlacing his metal fingers with his flesh ones in front of him tight enough to keep them from shaking. "Consider it the last act of James Buchanan Barnes."
"You're not dead. You're right here."
Barnes almost laughs - can feel the impulse crackling in him almost frantically but swallows it down. "You don't live as someone else - as something else - for seventy years and then just put it away because Captain America let you beat him up. Now I have some questions for you."
"Do you really want to do this?" Wilson says. Barnes can see him testing the rope, rolling his hands on his wrists.
"I really want information," Barnes says. "Tell me how to contact Natasha Romanoff."
Wilson's hands stop moving. "Natasha? This is about Natasha?"
Barnes reaches forward and hooks his metal index finger around one of Wilson's very flesh-and-blood fingers. "Tell me how to contact Natasha Romanoff," Barnes says, "or I'll break your fingers until you do."
"You don't have to be this, man," Wilson says, and though Barnes is close enough to feel his pulse beat faster and his breathing quicken, there is no sign of anxiety in his voice. "You don't have to be whatever HYDRA wants you to be anymore. Just come with me and we'll find Steve - "
Barnes applies the slightest pressure to Wilson's finger, and Wilson stops talking immediately. He should break the finger to show that he's serious. Wilson won't believe he's serious unless he breaks the finger.
"Romanoff," Barnes says.
"Steve wouldn't want you to do this," Wilson says, and Barnes can hear the flat undertone of desperation in his voice.
"It doesn't matter what Captain America wants," Barnes says. He needs to break the finger, start off strong with a show of force. It would be so easy to break the finger. "Or at least, it won't tomorrow morning. Tell me how to contact Romanoff."
Wilson's heartbeat slows from its rabbit-pace. After a moment, he says, "I'm starting to get the feeling that you don't want to do this, either."
Barnes contemplates this. He can still fix this. He is the Winter Soldier, and intimidation is well within his skills. "It would be wasteful," he says slowly, "to break you. On the other hand, I need information, and whatever I do to you won't matter, because today keeps repeating."
"I," Wilson says. "You. What?"
"It's been Thursday five times now," Barnes says. "I want you to understand that, because I can do anything to you, absolutely anything, and tomorrow morning it won't ever have happened. I'm the only one who remembers. I could torture you to death for Natasha Romanoff's phone number, and tomorrow morning it'll be today again but I'll still have her phone number. No consequences. Only benefits."
Barnes once again applies that slight pressure to Wilson's finger, and this time Wilson breathes in sharply.
"So you should tell me how to contact her and we can skip all of that."
"I don't know," Wilson says. "Seriously, man, I don't know. Why do you even want to contact her?"
Barnes felt the increasingly familiar sensation of hesitation. There would be no consequences to torturing Wilson. Every bone he broke would be repaired - no, it would have never been broken at all. Any damage he inflicted would be wiped away. Even the memory would disappear.
For reasons he can't quite understand, the thought makes him, if anything, less inclined to harm Wilson.
"You don't have to break any of my fingers for me to tell you that, 'cause it's the God's honest truth," Wilson continues. "We're not friends. She doesn't call me up to get mani-pedis."
"You were with her at the Helicarrier," Barnes says. "You're on a team together. It's on the news. The Avengers."
"The Helicarrier was kind of a one-of-a-kind situation, and we're not - we're not exactly a team. It's complicated. When Nat works with us, she works with Steve. You remember Steve? Big, blonde, wears a lot of stars and stripes? You shot him a couple times?"
This, Barnes realizes, is a potential source of leverage. He lets go of Wilson's finger, straightening his back out of his crouch so that their heads are at the same level; this should create an air of confidence and camaraderie, or something.
"He dies," Barnes says. "That's what makes time repeat. Every time today happens, he dies and it makes the day start over. That's what I'm trying to stop. I can't do that without information, and for information, I need Romanoff. She's a spy. She can get information."
Wilson looks Barnes square in the eye. "The thing you're trying to stop - is it Steve dying, or the day repeating and him being alive again?"
Barnes says nothing, but he finds that he can't control his expression, just for a moment. Whatever Wilson sees there, it seems to satisfy him - or surprise him, or possibly both.
Wilson says, "I have a phone number for her."
"Give it to me," Barnes says.
Wilson blinks at him. "I don't have it memorized - it's in my phone, which is in the room. With Steve. Sorry, man, but if you want to get to Romanoff, you've got to go through Steve." Wilson looks at him for a long moment. "You know we've been looking for you, right? You're Steve's endgame. Not taking out the rest of HYDRA, not the do-gooding. He just wants to find you."
Barnes can't stop the laugh this time. It comes out bitter. "And you? What do you care? Who are you going to turn me over to, now that SHIELD is gone? The military? I know you were Air Force."
"I was also VA," Wilson says, his voice quiet. "And I've seen guys come back from wars and make mistake after mistake after mistake, ruin their lives, just 'cause they think they have to go it alone. And those same guys, when they finally come in to the support group, when they go to therapy, when they start helping other people - that's when they really start to get better. Sometimes the only way to get rid of your burden is to share someone else's."
"I," Barnes says. "I don't want any burdens."
"Steve just wants to help you," Wilson says. "We just want to help. Do you even know what you want?"
It had been so easy, being the Winter Soldier. There hadn't been days, or months, or years, just missions. No memories, no decisions. Just actions. And if they happened to go one after another, that wasn't the same as causes and consequences, it was just the order they happened in.
And then to be shoved back into a world where things happened because of other things, where there were multiple courses of action with no strategic advantages or disadvantages that still had to be selected from - where to go, what to eat, choices without significance or impact that still dictated what came later. He no longer exists solely as the result of the actions he took for his missions; there's a him beyond the body on the cooling, blood-sodden carpet, beyond the steaming car wrapped around a tree. Suddenly he's defined by pointless, stakeless choices, living each moment in sequence, contingent on the choices he's made before.
And somehow every choice he makes today leads to the same consequence: another today, and another death for Steve Rogers.
"I know what I want," Barnes says slowly. "I just have to figure out how to get there."
"Then let us help you," Wilson says. "Have you tried that before?" Barnes doesn't answer, and Wilson keeps pressing. "In all the times that the day's repeated, have you tried actually working with us instead of kidnapping or torturing or just stalking us or whatever?"
Barnes looks Wilson in the eye. "I worked alone as the Winter Soldier."
"Okay, sure, but are you still the Winter Soldier now?" Wilson raises his eyebrows. "Thing is, when soldiers come back from their war, they've got to decide who they're going to be. Who they want to be. Do you want to be the guy stuck in the same day over and over again because you won't ask for help?"
Barnes narrows his eyes. "You're just trying to talk yourself out of that chair."
Wilson tilts his head to one side in a thoughtful, lopsided almost-nod, then looks back at Barnes. "Are you trying to tell me it's not working?"
Barnes scowls.
Barnes cuts the restraints, and watches Wilson use his whole, unbroken fingers to massage the rope-marks on his wrists as they walk across the horseshoe of the motel to Rogers's room.
"Steve?" Wilson says as he eases the motel room door open. "Don't freak out - oh." Wilson lets the door open the rest of the way, and the sound of running water in the other room seeps out. "He's still in the shower. Of course he is." Wilson enters entirely, and jerks his head for Barnes to follow, still muttering to himself. "I get kidnapped by the goddamn Winter Soldier on my way back from getting coffee, and does he even notice? Of course not."
Wilson sits on one of the beds. Barnes stands by the desk. They watch each other baldly in complete silence until the sound of the water stops with the creak of a knob.
"Hey Steve?" Wilson calls towards the door.
"Yeah?" The reply comes loud but unconcerned, drawling with familiarity.
"Make sure you put your pants on before you come out, okay?" Wilson calls back.
"Why?"
"Because I found Bucky."
A long, heavy silence, and then a thud and a muffled curse. A moment later, the door to the bathroom opens, and Captain America, shirtless but wearing damp jeans, stares at Barnes.
Barnes's throat constricts. Captain America stares at him the way he stared on the bridge, slack-jawed shock overriding anything else. Then he licks his lips and says, "Bucky?"
The pressure in Barnes's throat builds, and to break it, he says, "HYDRA knows you're coming. They're watching you. It's a trap."
"He thinks the day is repeating," Wilson adds.
"It is," Barnes snaps at him. "HYDRA didn't need SHIELD for its technology. The lab you're about to attack is proof of that."
Captain America blinks, the shock of seeing Barnes wearing off at least slightly. "You're saying they have something that can manipulate time?"
"Apparently," Barnes says, his patience fraying.
Captain America frowns now. "You say the day keeps repeating, so - so you were there? You've been to HYDRA's lab?"
"Yes!"
"Did you see anything glowing?" Captain America asks. "Something that didn't look like it should be, not like a computer or a light but - "
"A rock," Barnes says, and Wilson's head slowly lifts in surprise.
"A rock?" Wilson repeats, looking at the Captain.
"Thor said there were more Infinity Stones - and if they can do what the Tesseract did, what the Mind Stone does, who's to say one couldn't make a day repeat?" The Captain turns back to Barnes, looking him over with something almost like pain in his eyes. "Bucky, what were you doing at the lab in the first place?"
Barnes straightens his shoulders. "You make a good distraction."
After a moment, the Captain says, "What?"
"HYDRA has more information than the Black Widow managed to release," Barnes says, forcing a one-shouldered shrug. "Same reason as you."
"You've been using us as - as what, as bait?" the Captain asks.
Barnes shrugs again.
"How long - " the Captain begins, then cuts himself off. "No, that's not important. Did you see anyone using the stone? Touching it, probably, or maybe they were using it to power something?"
The only person who touched it was Barnes, so he shakes his head. "It was in their lab space. I don't think they knew what it was, either." On the other hand, another agent had reached for it - but she hadn't gotten it. "And none of this is going to matter if we don't move soon. HYDRA's surveilling the motel. If you wait too long they'll get suspicious and attack you here. They've done it before."
Which was mostly Barnes's fault. But he doesn’t say that.
"We need to attack," he continues. "Overwhelm them. They're not expecting me."
"If they're watching the motel," Wilson interrupts, "how come they haven't seen you?"
"They're incompetent. Overconfident and scared at the same time. They're not expecting me, so they don't see me - they're too busy watching you. And I'm good at hiding," he adds, unable to keep a grimace of dismay off his face. "The Winter Soldier."
"You're not that person anymore," the Captain says immediately, taking a step towards Barnes. "What HYDRA did to you - "
Barnes takes an involuntary step back, into the desk. "Don't - "
" - it wasn't your fault, Buck - "
"Don't say that," Barnes says. "Don't - don't you dare - "
"What they made you do - "
"Shut up!" Barnes says, and realizes that he's yelling.
"Bucky, it wasn't your - "
"Shut up, you don't get to say that, you don't get to take that away from me - that's all I have left! I'm not your Bucky, I can't wish away everything that's happened and if I don't have that then what the hell do I have? Not HYDRA, not the person I was before, so what do I have left?"
"Me," Captain America says.
Barnes smiles with no hint of mirth. "No," he said. "No, you want him. You want Bucky Barnes, your pal, your childhood friend. Bucky's dead. HYDRA killed him, just like you killed the Winter Soldier on that Helicarrier." The Captain's head jerks back as though Barnes struck him. "And you'd do it again. Now that you see what's left, look me in the eye and tell me if you could do what HYDRA did, if you could erase the memory of everything that happened since that fall from the train, if that would get you your Bucky back - look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't do it." Steve stares. But doesn't, Barnes notices, deny it. "The only way this day is going to end is if we end it. So are you coming or not?"
"Steve - " Wilson begins.
"I'm in," Captain America says, looking steadily at Barnes. "If this is what you need, then I'm in." He glances at Wilson. "Sam, you don't have to - "
"If you're going, there's not a chance in hell I'm sitting this one out." Wilson stands to emphasize his point, and Captain America, after a moment, nods.
Something about the exchange - the easy camaraderie, the understanding on both sides, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time - puts Barnes off balance. He should be part of that. That should be his. He should have none of it. He exists to work alone. This is the fault line where Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier meet, and it is dizzying, sickening, too much.
"HYDRA's watching you, not me," he says with a dry mouth. "Wait at least ten minutes before you leave. I'll be waiting for you there."
He turns and leaves without waiting for a response.
As he fills his duffel bag with equipment, he doesn't think about what Wilson and Captain America are talking about. As he closes it into the trunk of his car, he doesn't try to remember what it was like to be Captain America's friend, partner, mutually-most-important-person. Bucky Barnes is dead and there's no resurrecting him, no matter how much Barnes can feel the person he is now slipping. He's spent too long forcing fragments of what's left to him together into a himself that he can be to give it up. He won't let himself be taken away again.
Barnes parks his own car two lots over from the HYDRA lab, which is disguised as a Succeed! Testing Center facility, complete with bland-looking children smiling studiously in posters hanging in the front windows. This is the first time Barnes has seen the front of the facility; each time before he had gone in through the back. He sees security cameras but no surveillance personnel. Good. If they aren't expecting Barnes - and they shouldn't be - they won't have time to change their plans when Barnes joins Captain America and the Falcon.
He spends the ten minutes between his arrival and the Captain's debating whether to bring his grenades in. The lab is small, as are most of the small HYDRA facilities the Captain has been targeting now that the larger ones have fallen into chaos without the stronger hierarchical presence at the top; apparently cutting off one head means that the two that grow back will be smaller and possibly panicked. The few larger HYDRA bolt-holes merited a full Avengers presence, but now all that's left is obscure labs tucked into fake testing centers that are the size of actual testing centers. The rooms aren't big enough to safely use grenades without potentially getting caught up in the blast himself, particularly with Captain America and the Falcon present. Barnes is trying to save Captain America's life, not end it himself - although he isn't trying to save Captain America's life, either. Saving Captain America's life, he reminds himself, is just the necessary condition to keep the day from repeating again. His goal is to get to tomorrow, and tomorrow he -
Tomorrow he won't be able to continue his mission. He had been using Captain America and the Falcon to disguise his own break-ins, taking the opportunity to gather information that hadn't been in the Triskelion's files - the Winter Soldier's mission reports, descriptions of the machinery used to build him, contain him, control him. Captain America and the Falcon know that now. He can't use them as a distraction anymore - not without them knowing, at least.
Not unless the Captain dies again.
Two parking lots over, the Captain's car parks in front of the seemingly-abandoned testing center. Barnes checks the ammo in his guns, the knives in their sheaths, and leaves the grenades. Too risky.
"…sign the jet out next time? Something to be said about arriving in style," Wilson is saying, slinging his Falcon gear onto his back as Barnes approaches them. Barnes wonders for a moment why Wilson bothers to wear it for an attack on a purely indoor facility, then decides it isn't his problem.
"They'll stage an ambush," Barnes says. "They have cameras. They know we're here. There's a room beyond the main entrance, a lab - that's their choke point. We have to be fast."
The Captain pulls his shield out of the trunk and slams the trunk. "Then we go fast." He hesitates, looking at Barnes, and then says, "Even if you're doing this because you have to, you should know - we've got your back."
Barnes looks at him for a long moment. He didn't realize how much he wanted to hear it until the Captain said it, and he hates the Captain for that.
"Just don't die again," Barnes says. "It's fucking annoying."
He flexes his right hand to keep it from smacking easily against the Captain's arm the way it wants to, to turn the statement of fact into a joke, and instead he stalks towards the entrance.
He goes in first, not looking behind him to see if the Captain and the Falcon are following. He kicks the door off its hinges and sees the first round of HYDRA agents in what is a fairly convincing mockery of a testing center waiting room, with folding chairs and a sign-in desk - they're the fodder, to keep the ambush in the second room from being too obviously a trap. HYDRA works in segments and shadows, and these agents probably think they're the front line instead of sacrificial lambs. They don't know their calls for backup won't be answered.
Barnes doesn't let that stop him; his gun is already out. He takes one out with a headshot in the shock of his abrupt entrance, but a second ducks just fast enough to get only a graze. The other agents wake from their surprise enough to take aim and Barnes picks his next target -
- only for his bullet to deflect off the Captain's shield, hitting the same target in the stomach. The ricochet narrowly misses Barnes himself as he rolls to avoid it.
"My right, Buck, take my right - " the Captain yells, an edge to his voice almost like frustration, and Barnes bristles - his left side, with the metal arm that can block bullets in a pinch, is more strategically advantageous -
But Bucky Barnes always stood on the Captain's right, didn't he.
Instead, Barnes ignores the Captain, staying on the left - he already rolled in this direction, after all, and he comes out of his roll with a knife in his right hand, using his left to brush aside the agent's gun as he forces the knife under her jaw.
"Steve, I got it - " the Falcon calls, and Barnes steals a glance as he pulls his knife free. Apparently, the Falcon wears his wings in close combat because his guns are attached to them. That makes a bit more sense.
A sudden zing of motion on Barnes's left distracts him - the Captain's shield deflecting off the wall beside him, catching another agent approaching Barnes on the right in the face. The Captain steps forward to meet it, snatching it out of the air, and puts it on his arm. There are no more agents standing, Barnes realizes - they got them all.
"So," the Captain says, his mouth tucked in a severe and unhappy line, "should I expect you to listen to anything I say?"
Barnes flicks the blood off the knife, letting it splatter against the wall on his other side. It buys him a few seconds of avoiding eye contact. "I didn't come here to follow you."
The Captain swallows heavily, and Barnes has a sudden flash of memory - that little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I'm following him - but the Captain just says, "I'm not asking you to. But I told you I'd have your back. Can you at least trust me to do that?"
The knife is shaking in Barnes's hand. He resheathes it to hide the motion. "Same thing." Wilson stands by the sign-in desk, one of his guns still out and the other retracted. Barnes points beyond him, to the door to the next room. "That's where they're waiting. This wasn't the ambush. This was a misdirection. And this - " he lifts his metal arm and shakes it a bit - "gives me a tactical advantage in this - " he points to the left - "direction, so I'm going to go where I can use it." He heads towards the door.
"Hey!" The Captain moves around and ahead of him, holding out a hand to stop him, and Barnes stops before they can make contact. "I should go first."
"You're the target," Barnes says through gritted teeth.
"I have a shield." The Captain holds it up to demonstrate, raising his eyebrows.
Barnes can't quite argue with that, so instead he says, "The last time I saw your back I shot you in it."
Wilson shifts uncomfortably in Barnes's peripheral vision, but the Captain just raises his eyebrows higher. "Well, don't do that again. You're the one who said my dying was annoying."
The Captain turns and makes his own way to the door, stepping not-so-delicately over fallen HYDRA agents. Barnes realizes that his mouth is curved in a half-smile. It was funny. The Captain made a joke and he found it funny. No - the part of him that used to be Bucky found it funny.
As soon as the Captain is safe - as soon as tomorrow is safe - Barnes has to leave. It's the only chance he has to survive as himself.
He follows the Captain anyway.
But he's preoccupied in the fight that ensues; the Captain and Falcon are ready for the first volley, but Barnes's attention is scattered and even he can tell. He's on the left but keeps looking to the right - part of him expects more backup, the Howling Commandos, and the rest of him overcompensates - his guns feel off in his hands and the Captain's shield is always where he least expects it to be -
He falls back into habits. The Winter Soldier takes over.
The Winter Soldier wasn't meant for a battlefield, but for assassinations, and he fights like it. Each threat is taken one at a time, allowing one into range for close-combat if it means getting the headshot on another, trading distance for slit throats. He blocks out of his attention where the Captain is, where the Falcon is, and focuses on the threats immediately before him, where his superior force can compensate for his lack of larger awareness -
"Bucky!"
He turns just in time to see the Captain's shield strike the hand of an agent aiming for him, and the Captain follows shortly after, kicking the agent over the lab table that Barnes hadn't even registered and scattering its contents -
Including a familiar orange gem, already glowing, skittering across the floor in front of Barnes.
It distracts Barnes just long enough for the agent he had been fighting to land a shock-stick to Barnes's mechanical arm, the spasms opening his fingers and letting his knife drop. The agent catches it midair, and Barnes realizes that the Captain is close, too close, and too focused on the agent he just knocked over to realize -
The agent slits Captain America's throat, spurting blood onto the floor in front of them.
Barnes, barely thinking, grabs the knife with his flesh-and-blood hand, unaffected by the shock stick, and even though two of his fingers and the inside of his thumb press into the blade, he shoves it into the base of the agent's throat. He drops, and Barnes turns his attention back to the Captain, who - who is bleeding, who is dying, who is paling and gasping again -
Barnes thinks, no.
Not again.
6.
Barnes wakes up as the newspaper hits the door of his motel room, a dulled thud of wood pulp on wood, and realizes that he's already sat up and pulled the pistol out from under his pillow. The alarm clock next to the bed reads 7:13.
He sets the pistol down, and it leaves smears of red on the white motel-bed sheets. He looks at his hand - his right hand. Neat lines cut into his thumb and middle and index fingers where he grasped the knife.
The bleeding is already growing sluggish, but he makes a note of it: for some reason, while everyone and everything else resets when the Captain dies, neither his mind nor his body do.
He resolves that today is the last today. He will make it to tomorrow this time. There is no other option.
Then he throws his legs off the side of the bed and gets to work.
Ten minutes later he kicks down the door of the room the Captain and the Falcon share. He's early: Wilson hasn't even left to get the coffee yet, but has a gun out within a moment of the sudden disruption and aims it at Barnes from the other side of the far twin bed. The shield leans against the foot of the nearer bed, and the bathroom door, next to Barnes, is closed.
"Get your wings, Wilson, you're going to need them," Barnes says to Wilson, and the bathroom door opens. Barnes doesn't bother to look, just grabs the shield and tosses it towards the bathroom door. "Put your clothes back on. You're skipping your shower. You take too long anyway."
He continues through the room, ignoring Wilson's open-mouthed surprise - and the way his gun follows Barnes - to flip the blinds on the windows closed. When he turns back to the room, he sees that neither Wilson nor the Captain have moved - the Captain, shirtless but wearing sweatpants, stands in the bathroom door. At least he caught his shield.
Barnes remembers that he hasn't actually explained himself in this version of today. "You're going to attack HYDRA. They know you're coming. It's a trap. If you wait too long, they'll ambush you here instead. They have something, some kind of infinity rock you said, and it's making the day repeat."
They still don't move.
"The day repeats when you die," Barnes adds, in case that spurs them into motion.
"Bucky…?" the Captain says.
Barnes gives up on him, but sees the Falcon's wings leaning against the legs of the motel desk. He picks them up and shoves them at Wilson.
"We don't," Barnes says, biting off each syllable, "have time. HYDRA is waiting. The sooner we get there, the more surprise we'll have and the higher the chances that today won't repeat again."
"Did you say Infinity Stone?" Wilson says, looking at the Captain. "Aren't those the things that Thor - "
"Yes, Thor said there were more of them, we don't have time for this," Barnes snaps.
The Captain says, sounding stunned, "You're here…to help us?"
Barnes hesitates. Then he says, "I'm here to stop the day from repeating. I guess that means helping you. Get your equipment and meet me in the stairwell."
He leaves, and in the stairwell, he thinks, quite specifically, of nothing at all.
It's less than five minutes before the Captain and Wilson join him, geared up.
"Bucky - " the Captain says.
"We're going in the back," Barnes interrupts. "They're expecting you to come in the front, and they're expecting you to come alone. But their lab has a back door so we're going in that way. If we park down the street and approach from behind, we can take them by surprise. I'm going to stay on your left. I'm more effecting fighting on the left. And watch where you throw your goddamn shield. We're taking my car."
He moves again, this time going to the parking lot and to his car. After a moment, he hears the footsteps of the Captain and Wilson following him.
"Bucky - "
Barnes ignores him and keeps walking.
He drives. The Captain takes the front seat. Wilson, muttering something to the Captain about 'I remember the last time I drove with this guy,' takes the back. It better accommodates his wings anyway.
"Bucky, I know - " the Captain says once they're en route, and licks his lips. Barnes only sees the motion out of the corner of his eye. Barnes is not looking at the Captain. "I mean, I don't know…are you okay?"
That makes Barnes look at the Captain, and whatever the Captain sees there makes him fold his mouth into a rueful line.
"Okay. Dumb question."
The rest of the ride is silent.
Barnes parks them where he parked before, two lots over and out of view of the cameras. He leads them to the back door, marked as a fire exit. The Captain raises his shield and moves to kick the door open, but Barnes intercepts him.
"You're the target, remember?" he says, and kicks it down himself, but even though he enters already shooting, he moves swiftly to the left to clear space for the Captain and the Falcon to come in after him.
The Captain and the Falcon trade a look, and the Captain doesn't seem happy about it, but they don't say anything. Barnes will take that as a win.
He was right - HYDRA is unprepared without the warning of Captain America's ostentatious red, white, and blue coming in through the front door. With three people and the element of surprise, it's easier than any of the other times, and it almost feels natural, to trust Captain America to have his back.
But it grates at him. It's too easy. Something will go wrong, just like it did last time, and the time before, and then he'll be waking up again in his motel room with the memory of Captain America's blood painting yet another surface of the lab -
The remaining agents use the laboratory space as a chokepoint again, but this time they're visibly scared and off-balance. Barnes keeps his focus on supporting the Captain this time, watching the agents' aims to see who's targeting the Captain and taking them out before they have a chance. But the Captain, he notes, keeps glancing towards him and the Falcon, making sure they're okay, and Barnes can barely concentrate on what he's supposed to be doing past the writhing knot in his stomach each time the Captain diverts his attention -
Another agent aims at the Captain, and Barnes aims at him first, squeezing the trigger.
His gun clicks. He wasn't counting his shots.
He doesn't have time to blame himself for making the dumbest of dumb errors. He just throws himself between the agent and the Captain, and when the bullet hits, right at the spot where the metal of his arm meets the flesh of his chest, it feels like fire shooting through that entire side of his body, in the mechanical nerves wired into the arm and seeping into his lungs and crawling up his neck and -
He's on the floor. There's a gap in his memory between the bullet hitting and him landing on the floor. It occurs to him that the red flowing across the linoleum floor like an outgoing tide must be his blood.
"Bucky!"
Someone pulls him off the floor, careful of his injury, but even that motion jars it -
It's Steve looking down at him. Steve is still alive.
Everything goes black.
0.
Barnes wakes up to the sound of percolating coffee, and realizes he is not in his own bed, because there is no pistol beneath the pillow. But there is the gentle sound of running water on the other side of the wall next to his bed.
"Steve's in the shower," comes Wilson's voice from somewhere outside Barnes's immediate field of view. "Seeing as you made him skip his earlier. He does take long ones - I always figured it was because there was never enough water in the war."
Barnes tries to sit up, and his shoulder blazes with pain.
"Maybe don't do that for a little bit," Wilson says, and steps into view at the side of the bed. "I did the best I could to patch you up, but apparently when they put the metal arm in, they moved some stuff around. The good news is, once we got the bleeding stopped, everything started to take care of itself. There wasn't enough damage to need surgery. You got lucky."
Barnes looks over towards the bathroom. "And he's…?"
"He's fine," Wilson says. "I gotta say, we weren't entirely sure what to make of you when you came barging in here this morning, but…" He shrugs, looking down at Barnes. "Thank you for saving his life. Again, I guess. He said you'd pulled him out of the Potomac but I guess I didn't really believe it."
Barnes stares at him. He knows exactly which words to use to protest that he didn't do it to save Steve Rogers's life, that he only wanted the day to stop repeating. But his chest feels oddly light, in spite of the bullet wound, and he realizes that he's glad. He's glad Steve Rogers is alive.
And he thinks he might be gladder than he is dismayed.
"You know," Wilson says, looking over at the bathroom door, "sometimes the only way to help yourself is to help someone else." A wistful look almost like regret flashes over his expression for a moment, but then the sound of water stops. "I'll let you guys do some catching up. 'Sides, the coffee in the lobby's ten times better than the stuff in here."
"We didn't have running water," Barnes blurts out, and Wilson pauses, halfway turned away from him. "Growing up, we - we'd get our water downstairs and have to carry it up. We'd heat it on the stove for a bath. With his chest sometimes, in the winter, a hot bath was the only thing that helped him breathe, but it was just so damn hard…so whenever we were barracked somewhere with showers, he'd stay in there forever."
Wilson smiles. "I guess some things don't change, huh?"
"I guess not."
Wilson nods his head slightly, as though answering his own question, and slips out of the room.
Steve emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, fully dressed but with hair still wet. His eyes go wide with some kind of question when he sees that Wilson isn't in the room, but he takes the few steps to the foot of the bed and visibly stops himself from putting the wet towel down on it. That's when Barnes realizes that he's in Steve's bed, on Steve's side of the room.
"Wilson went for better coffee," Barnes says, because he isn't sure what else to say.
Steve raises his eyebrows. "He make some comment about the coffee here in the room?"
Barnes nods, carefully, and manages not to jostle his shoulder.
"Of course he did," Steve mutters, tossing the towel on the bathroom floor instead. "Looks like he made some anyway." He passes out of Barnes's view, and Barnes carefully levers himself up using his right arm, earning only a dull ache in his left side as he sits back against the wall. Now he can see Steve setting out two paper cups and pouring coffee into one. Then he hesitates, looking back over at Barnes. "How do you take your coffee these days?"
Barnes honestly has no idea. He doesn't think he's had coffee since before he fell from the train. Before he died the first time. So he says, "I guess you'd know better'n me."
Steve frowns minutely, just for a moment, then pours the second cup with one hand and reaches for a packet of sugar with the other. "Buck, I just want you to know that - if you want to go, or go back to following me and Sam, or whatever you want to do, I won't - I won't stand in your way." He comes back to the bed with two cups of coffee and holds one out to Barnes. "But if you need me, for any reason, for anything, just - you should know that I meant it. I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
Barnes takes the cup slowly with his right hand and holds it close to himself, letting the warmth seep out. He can't quite find words to respond.
"Do you remember saying that to me?" Steve asks, his voice quiet.
"You said it," Barnes says. "On the Helicarrier."
"You said it first. After my mom's funeral, do you - do you remember?"
Barnes frowns, bringing the memory to mind. "I remember…you were being stupid about your place, so upset you couldn't even find your key but you insisted you'd be fine on your own, and I said--I guess it was something like that, yeah. But it wasn't - I didn't say it like something special. It wasn't important, it was just - true. The way things were." He can't bring himself to look at Steve. "But that was a long time ago."
"Yeah," Steve says, and Barnes can hear the weight of each and every one of those years in his voice. "Yeah, it was."
The silence lies between them. Barnes takes a cautious sip of his coffee. It warms him, and feels familiar, and it is entirely too sweet, so much so that he almost gags. But he swallows it down. HYDRA, it seems, provided him with very little sugar. He thinks he wouldn't mind being the kind of person who takes sugar in his coffee, even if it might not be as much as it once was.
"I was thinking," he says. "Maybe since - since you seem like you could use some help not dying, I was thinking maybe I could…stick around."
He finally looks up to meet Steve's eyes, and he can't tell whether Steve is crying or smiling. Maybe, terrifyingly, both. "Yeah," Steve says, "okay."
"Okay," Barnes says. He may regret this. He knows that.
But it's his decision, and as he makes it, he realizes that for the first time, the choice feels not like a prison, but like freedom.