Chapter Text
Natasha had him nailed: He’s a terrible liar.
So he keeps his mouth mostly shut as he and Sam follow Nat’s leads, intel turned up along with shadows under her eyes or a catch in her words. The price she pays is high--that much is clear, but he figures she thinks she’s got something to settle, and he keeps his mouth shut about that, too.
Left to Steve and Natasha, there are a lot of long silences. Not awkward, but not old-marrieds-comfortable, either. She doesn’t offer up where the leads come from; he doesn’t push it. Cares, sure--cares about the shadows and her cracked voice, but cares more about getting their gear packed up and making the next Stark-supplied car or private plane to wherever ... to that next lead. A city over or two countries away or across an ocean.
Steve keeps his sentences short, his tone military-crisp in those moments of transition. Doesn’t want to waste time.
Sam ... Yeah, thank God for Sam. He is the perfect buffer between them--”got no dog in this hunt,” he says, which is outrageously untrue, but it lets him smooth the edges between Steve’s singleminded focus and Nat’s circumspection. All the words they aren’t saying. Sam tells stories about his childhood--his teenaged years, so they're funny, awkward stories that are maybe a little exaggerated, but it doesn’t matter. His words are meant to put everyone at ease while they’re shoveling down takeout and drinking that sour water that comes out of hotel bathroom taps.
It works in short bursts. Steve laughs and talks a little, tells one tale or another from Brooklyn in words pushed out before the actual memories settle in hard. Natasha offers less. And, for the first time since Steve knew her, she seems shifty in her own skin, aware that her history is just on the other side of the small tablet Sam keeps in his coat pocket and the phone Steve ... doesn’t know what to do with most of the time.
He doesn’t look at the phone, not for that. Doesn’t know if Sam does, but sometimes their eyes meet behind Natasha’s back and Sam kind of shrugs, with an eyebrow that says something, and even if Sam had looked, maybe it doesn’t matter.
Steve reassured Bruce once on that front, at the beginning of this life. He thinks he and Natasha have been through enough, so much since then, that she won’t take his guff anyway--might break his face if he tries comfort. Empathy. She smirks at Sam and nods sharp to Steve, and they pack their gear again and move on.
To the next sighting, a day late. The Winter Soldier was ... they might call him a free agent now; some do call him that. When Sam said it, Natasha’s expression hadn’t changed, but her eyes had blinked and refocused, flickered pretty much, and Steve went from relieved to wound tight in that single moment.
A soldier without orders. Without missions. Without memories. With the wrong kind of memories. A soldier capable of ...
But Steve didn’t talk about what he saw in those files.
They hadn’t found any bodies.
They hadn’t found any bodies.
The Soldier--he had no pattern from what Natasha could tell, which made it all feel like a damn goose chase. Or maybe like they’re following a lure through the water, no idea that the end of the line is a frying pan.
Because, each time, when they drop through a ceiling panel or leap from the back of the van, they absolutely fail to surprise the Winter Soldier. (Sam tells him don’t call that Bucky Barnes, that’s not Bucky, not now, but how can Steve--? Even when the Soldier’s expression is more manic than blank--than too-familiar agonized--oh, hell, it’s him. It is.)
And, each time, Bucky fights like he’s about to get murdered, cornered and wild, even against three--especially against three--but he puts down Natasha or sends Sam after some endangered civilians, and then it’s just Steve and the Soldier, and Bucky--
The Soldier fights him like he wants to murder Steve, metal backhand to the cheek, taking out the hearing in that ear ... grabbing Steve’s head and slamming it into the pavement ...
... knocking an ankle out until it crumples ...
... breaking a rib or three with the unforgiving flat of a ripped-off car door.
(Steve fights like he wants to save Bucky, which is to mean it’s just as enraged, just as merciless, but the flesh and bone and metal opposite him take the punishment Steve would give that snake Zola and monster Pierce, oh, if only he could. Steve believed, yes, and he'll leave most to their divine, earned justice, but not those two. Not if he had the chance. They got off easy.)
Sometimes, especially if Steve is distracted by his own dark thoughts, un-Christian thoughts, the Soldier triumphs, puts a foot on Steve's chest and stares down, panting. That’s when Steve sees the blankness in that face, like he’s waiting for new orders now that Steve’s been put down (but Steve’s still breathing, hey--Steve will get up in a minute, and it’s when he moves that the Soldier snaps out of the fugue and backs away, turning to bolt down an alley as Sam directs law enforcement and Nat comes the fuck back from wherever she was thrown).
When Steve wins, when he pins Bucky like he used to back just horsing around in the camp or ... or after ... When Steve gets Buck under his hands again, the Soldier goes crazy, yeah, every time, and writhes and rends and screams--dear Christ, the screams--until Steve pulls away. Steve had been scared the first time or two it had happened, dropped his grip because he was expecting a poisoned tooth to foam from Bucky’s mouth, but now it just ... he expects it.
Expects more to come. Because there is a ritual now, and Bucky running off doesn’t end it.
They don’t share a room--he, Sam, and Natasha. Even in the roughest circumstances, he makes sure Tony Stark’s arrangements accommodate privacy. Begs off early in the night, after food and debrief, explaining that he needs some quiet time to regroup. To heal whatever the Winter Soldier left on him that time, and Nat looks thoughtfully at him while Sam--Sam knows something is up, but is probably waiting for Steve to confess the inner pain that fuels his nightmares.
Steve’s okay with Sam believing what he believes. Most nights, Steve doesn’t sleep enough to dream. He limps into his own bed after every fight, won or lost--always damaged. He’ll heal, but it’ll take overnight until the marks disappear, the ones Sam and Nat have catalogued. The ones they’ll remember.
By dawn, he’ll have new ones anyway.
The Soldier finds him after each confrontation, won or lost. Slides into the room in ways no one should be able to, not in these sleek, modern hotels Natasha favors. Able to loosen and gape windows that were never designed to open beyond a handspan.
The first couple of times, Steve hadn’t heard him at all.
Now he knows to listen. Now, the nights after those conflicts, when his body aches with cuts and sprains, the twitches of muscle knitting back together, he doesn’t sleep at all. It’s always the same, and his breath catches as he hears the slick slide of glass along metal, a noise anyone else would dismiss as wind or the creaks of a settling building.
Steve never knows whether to make it easy or make it hard. Can't tell if it makes a difference. Either way, he flinches when palms slap down on either side of his head. Looks up and can’t see--the pitch dark of the room by design as well. He’d thought it was a dream at first, before ...
Ritual: Both of Steve’s wrists caught hard in the metal grip, pulled over his head, and the other hand, the one that Steve knew, that knew Steve, before, presses to the skin of his hip, shoves up his t-shirt. Exposes bruised, raw flesh.
What they’d had before wasn’t like this. No, not like this. But then, he was never supposed to have this again. And while he can’t see Bucky’s face--doesn’t know what's in his eyes--
He’s here. And Steve will make it easy for him, he will every time. Won’t fight the hold on his wrists or fingernails digging near to bone, whatever--whatever Bucky wants to do to him, but Steve does have a price. The Soldier knows it, and he comes anyway.
Steve twists away from the fingers brushing over his stomach, just enough for effect. Hisses up into the dark: “Say my name.” Growls when the fingertips still. “No. Bucky. You know my name. Say it.”
And whether Bucky remembers it himself or just ... can parrot what he’s learned ... it hardly matters, does it, when Bucky snarls Steve’s name with hot breath right in his face, and that Steve remembers from the old life.
Buck’s kisses are mauling, another form of fighting, but when Steve shifts down the mattress to trap Bucky in his own legs, for one more damn time, they find themselves fighting on the same side.
In the mornings, he wipes the shower-steam from the mirror and catalogues his own fresh wounds in the mirror. Bite marks and gouges, all to be covered by collar, sleeves, uniform. Sam or Natasha asks him how he’s doing as they debate breakfast and the day’s strategy, and he offers a grim smile and nods once, and then talks about something else.
Steve is a terrible liar. Yeah, Nat had that pegged.
So he makes sure he says nothing at all.