Chapter Text
A short balding man with glasses gives you new life as damn near indestructible, weeks later his protege straps you down, shaves your head, muttering along as he does so. “The first step for new life,” he says, “is you have to die.”
With vibranium alloy fingers tucked neatly around the column of your throat you decide to keep your mouth shut.
“To die is to rot in the fucking ground,” Bucky tells you this.
Bucky and you are on the fourth floor of the final SHIELD/HYDRA building on your world tour of redemption. The shipping yard in Visby’s Harbour serves as front for a SHIELD safe house, the two off you don’t care. SHIELD, HYDRA are synonymous in your book and must be taken out.
The two of you would pick off organization by organization, working your ways through the CIA to MI6 to SAPO, if you had more time but your morality eats away at your resolve like rust to the hull of a ship.
“Do you know James Buchanan Barnes?”
You do, of course you do, you are James Buchanan Barnes, but you merely say, Who?
He doesn't like that answer.
Nine floors underground a kitchen timer counts down, inching thirty-six blocks of C-4 to oblivion.
Your breath is shallow as his fingers tighten and you smile, blood leaking between your teeth staining your Cheshire cat smile as you stare into eyes so familiar they might as well be your own (ha).
Ten minutes.
“Shut the fuck up”
We’re going to die in ten minutes.
“I don’t want to die”
The only step left is death.
“Why do you want to die?”
Nine minutes.
“Why. Do. You. Want. To. Die?”
Why do you want to live?
His grip loosens and you slump to the ground.
Eight minutes until detonation and America is on the horizon.