Chapter Text
Something had happened. The soldier wasn’t sure what. He vaguely remembered going to sleep, his last view before the white mist of oblivion covered his face was looking at the Mission, his Mission, alive, unhurt, smiling gently.
I can’t trust my own mind.
He woke, alone.
The cryo tube was shattered, mist leaking into the air with its smell of dreams and faded memory. He never spoke of the dreams while in the tube, wretched and hot and vivid and going on and on, even when he knew he was dreaming, he couldn’t escape their clutches.
There was a dead man on the floor that wasn’t the soldier. He tipped the man over; a scientist, or doctor, throat cut. He had the dark skin and natural hair of one of the African nations. The soldier grabbed the clipboard from him; he didn’t read Wakandan, but he could recognize some of the base words and lettering. Bad place to be. Wakandans were fierce fighters and didn’t appreciate strangers on their land. There was no way to blend in, either.
Another dead man, this one shot in the back. The soldier inspected this one further, he wore tac gear. The soldier confiscated his gun, (checked the ammo, it was loaded, and there were two spare magazines in the bag) knives and food. No point in the gear, it had already been ruined. Boots were too large, but better than bare feet. The soldier shoved his feet into them and laced them tight.
A faint noise, like someone taking a shaking breath, and the soldier whirled, gun pointed in the direction of… a kid. Four, maybe five years old, with dark curling hair and wide brown eyes and a pistol pointed directly at the soldier’s heart. He was wearing a man’s t-shirt, emblazoned with a metal band’s symbol on it, no pants, no shoes, the shirt fitting him like a smock.
Gunfire rattled off a few rooms away, but the kid didn’t flinch, he didn’t move and he didn’t take the gun off the soldier. “Don’t move.”
The soldier considered it. He was without armor, but one bullet wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t even slow him down. He felt no compulsion to attack. He didn’t put his gun down, but he didn’t make any threatening moves.
“Tactical report?” the soldier requested.
“Hydra invaded. Come to take you home,” the boy said. “You gonna let ‘em?”
“Not the plan,” the soldier said. “Steve?” He didn’t know what a Steve was, the mission, maybe? The blonde man. It was important, but he was still too sleep fogged to sort it.
“Protecting the others,” the boy said. “Not that freaky bitch queen can’t take care of herself.”
The language, in the mouth of a child that small was a dissonance. The soldier shook his head, trying to clear it.
“You gonna try to kill me again?”
The soldier didn’t remember trying to kill this child to begin with, but that was hardly unusual. He had killed children before, he knew it, but didn’t know how that was a thing that he knew. He shook his head. He had no compulsion, no mission to direct him. No desire to shed blood unless it was for his own protection. “Not today.”
“Then we should get you off the battlefield,” the tiny tactical genius said. “You aren’t clear enough to tell who’s friend and who’s not. Heaven forbid you try to rip someone else’s heart out. Eventually you’ll end up killing everyone who’s actually on your side, and then what will you do?”
The soldier rather thought that this was a rhetorical speech and didn’t bother to answer. Had he ripped someone’s heart out? He couldn’t quite remember that, either. “Who are you?”
“Not telling you that,” the boy said, not looking back. “Not now. Too dangerous.”
“Who am I?”
“Sergeant James Barnes,” the boy said. “The Winter Soldier. Now come on, before someone else comes looking for you.”
“You, go that way, as far as you can run in a day, stay near the river. I’ll send Steve to get you after this shit is done. If Steve doesn’t come for you -- unlikely, but you never know, eventually that idiot is going to bite off more than he can chew up and spit out -- don’t show yourself to anyone who doesn’t call out the passcode ‘he’s fast and she’s weird.’ Got that much?”
The soldier nodded.
“I’ll try an’ send them in order of people you’ll recognize, but I think every last one of Hydra’s here, who’s left over, and that’s a good sized army. A few billion ants can take down even a tank.”
The soldier was about to argue -- as much as he could with limited vocabulary and a very unspecific reason why he shouldn’t be separated from this boy -- when the decision was taken out of his hands. Hydra mech-soldiers, wearing armored combat suits and toting hand cannons, burst out of the hallway, and there was no more time for peaceful solutions or arguments.
The soldier jerked the kid close to him. “Stay down,” he ordered, and the soldier went to war. It was fast and ugly. The kid did not stay down, and he did not stay uninvolved, using his pistol to advantage. The kid had incredible aim, good reflexes, and he was fearless. Between the two of them, the assault force of a dozen mechs were down in less than ten minutes.
The soldier raided two sets of the armor for more weapons, a tactical vest, shoes that fit better. He crafted a makeshift pair of pants and thick, bound leg and footwraps for the kid.
“What are you doing?” the kid asked, as if it wasn’t obvious, as if he didn’t already know.
“Getting you out of here,” the soldier responded. “You’re coming with me.”
“The hell I am,” the kid stated. “You tried to kill me. You killed my parents. You and your fucking missions and the man who loves you anyway nearly destroyed the goddamn world. Now I am trying to be reasonable about this, but I don’t think you’re worth it. I think you’re a goddamn rabid dog and you need to be put down. But that’s not up to me, and I can’t ever get Cap back if you’re not helped. But I’m not your friend and I’m not going.”
It took exactly three seconds to disarm the boy, and only because the soldier didn’t want to break his arm in the process. He wrapped the kid up in an oversized jacket and slung him over the soldier’s shoulder like an aggravated knapsack. The soldier picked out his path and ran. The kid didn’t scream; smart enough to know that he’d draw exactly the wrong sort of attention. The soldier disappeared into the jungle without looking back.
“Our form dictates our thinking,” the kid said, eventually. They were at least two days journey south of the Wakandan compound. The sounds of fighting had faded, but the smoke from the destruction was still in the sky, visible in the evenings.
“What’s that mean?” the soldier asked. He’d had to keep his metal hand on the kid at all times, because every time the soldier relaxed, the kid had tried to bolt again. And he was very good with knots. You have literally kidnapped me, the boy had said, eventually, with a great deal of venom.
“It means that the longer I stay this way, the harder it’s going to be for me to remember that I’m not a child,” the boy said. The soldier didn’t know anything about that. Probably a delusion. Or a trick.
“Explain?”
“Because apparently, your precious Steve is the only one allowed to tell lies,” the boy snarled, “Wanda was in the process of calling me a spoiled little brat when Hydra swarmed out of the hills and scared her. She was already swirling red freaksauce around and she directed it all at me. I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t try to pull another half dozen fucking cars on my head.”
“What lie?” That sounded familiar. Freaky red swirls and cars. The soldier tried to push into the fog of his memory but the harder he struggled with it, the further that taste of memory receded until he couldn’t even remember what he thought he might have remembered.
The boy snorted and glared at him as if the soldier had completely missed the point. “That her brother’s not dead. Anymore. Helen reconstructed him in the same cradle that stole my JARVIS and gave Wanda her fucking boyfriend. I lied because he was dead, he was going to die. If Helen couldn’t repair the cradle in time, if his wounds were too great, if the process didn’t work, she’d have just had to grieve for him all over again if anyone had given her that hope. It would have delayed the healing process for her, and she’s too fucking dangerous to be standing on the raggedy edge, waiting for a push.”
“What did Steve --”
“Everything. Okay, goddamnit, he lied about everything. He’s not Captain America, he’s Captain fucking Bucky Barnes, because whenever you show up, he forgets everything except you. Keep you safe, keep you hidden, protect you, no matter what the cost. No matter who else gets hurt. Fuck me, fuck the team, fuck the US government, fuck a hundred and seventeen different countries that think maybe dangerous people like him and me and you and Wanda ought not be let loose on the world without some goddamn oversight.” The kid crossed both arms over his chest.
“I am trying to own my mistakes, to make up for them. Even when they’re not mine, because fixing the problem ought to take precedence over who caused the problem. Well, congradu-fucking-lations, because you’ve done it again. You get fixed, I get to be the bad guy, and everyone still loves Captain America. I have a solution for your goddamn sieve of a brain; you’re going to get a full goddamn pardon, isn’t that just fucking peachy? Captain America’s back on the team, yippee-kai-aye, motherfucker. And I’m going to get stuck being a goddamn kid again because you’ve kidnapped my ass.”
“You’re Tony Stark,” the soldier said, staring.
“And you’re brilliant, yes, thank you,” Tony sniped.
“All right, then. Come on.” He held out one arm to the kid.
“Where are we going now?”
“Back,” the Winter Soldier said.
“Why?”
“Because Wanda needs to fix this,” the Winter Soldier said, slowly. “Fix you.”
“And then I need to fix you, okay, that’s fair, I suppose,” Tony said.
Bucky shrugged one shoulder. “You first.” He shook his head, harder, trying to clear the fog, and it hurt, damn it, hurt to remember, he didn’t like remembering. Remembering attached everything to him, and his load was heavy, so goddamn heavy already. But how much blame was Tony shouldering and no one was trying to take it off him?
Bucky picked up the kid and balanced him on his hip. Tony hesitated a moment, then leaned his head against Bucky’s shoulder, warm and comforting.
There were going to be consequences. All kinds of them. But fixing the problem took precedence over who caused the problem. And Bucky was going to fix this.