Chapter 2
Steve paces. His mind is a hurricane. Alessia is watching, whining softly. This can’t be happening. It shouldn’t. Natasha is sat with her hands neatly folded on the tabletop, watching him calmly. Vikenti is coiled around her throat. "You know him," Steve says quietly. "Why didnt you tell me."
"I didn't know," she replies quietly. "I didn't make the connection."
"Bullshit," Steve snaps before he can catch himself. "You knew who he was. You knew who was to me, why didn't you say anything." It hurts dully, she'd been the closest thing he had to a friend when he was still finding his feet. She'd been the one who gave him the files in the first place.
She unfolds her hands, brushes her hair back, "I only knew a few months ago. I was told not to tell you," She says simply. "And they were the type of orders I couldn't disobey."
Alessia snarls low in her throat and Steve tugs at his hair. They've got Bucky, the Winter Soldier Clint calls him, tranqued and cuffed in a small room downstairs while they wait for S.H.I.E.L.D to get here, not that Steve has any intention of letting them whisk Bucky away to some unknown corner of the world. "Tell me where you met him."
She leans back and Vikenti hisses quietly, "The Red Room, he was one of theirs. A Soviet assassin, the best. I trained with him for a bit. I knew him as Yasha."
"Why would an American soldier work for the Soviets?" Alessia barks.
Natasha glances down her, "He spoke perfect Russian and when he spoke English it was with a Russian accent." She sits forward, "You saw what Loki did to Clint? Those people had the power to do that without a staff. I don't know what they did to your friend but whatever it was they tore him out and put whatever they wanted back in."
Alessia wants to tear something, rip someone to pieces and Steve can feel her rage pulsing through him. Bucky is alive and here and they knew. S.H.I.E.L.D knew but they smiled and offered condolences and handed him files filled with lies (and Steve knows better than to blindly trust shady organisations after New York but godammit.) He's seething, he can't even think straight and Natasha, who knewand didn't say anything because of orders is sat there watching him without a glimmer of remorse.
"Steve," she says carefully, "I'm sorry."
Steve sees red, white hot, and the next thing he knows he's put his fist though Tony's stupid glass table. Natasha stares up at him, more disbelieving than frightened and Steve blanches a little, rubs at the back of his neck. "I'm going to see him."
-
He stares through the tiny glass window at the body on the table. Tony's taken his arm - and Steve can't process the fact that Bucky's here let alone that he has one arm - and it's all way too much like finding him strapped to a gurney in Red Skull's hideout. He's pale, there's dark make up smudged around his eyes, around his face, he's pale and alone.
("He doesn't have a daemon," Tony had muttered, staring at Bucky's prone body, Mena on his shoulder.
Natasha had stood up, Vikenti winding himself around her arm, "He doesn't have one. At least he never did when I knew him.")
Ally leans against his leg, warm and solid, "We saw her, Steve. We saw her."
Steve drops a hand to rest on her head, "I don't know, Ally." He says quietly. "How could she survive that?"
Bucky shifts on the table, yells something unintelligible and Steve braces himself, slipping back into battle mode immediately. There's a soft snigger from somewhere behind him and he spins to find Bruce watching them, Iakona draped across his shoulders, "You can relax," Bruce says, a soft smile on his face. "I gave him enough tranquillisers to keep the Other Guy down."
Steve relaxes a fraction and Bruce steps towards them, peering into the room, "So, he's an old army buddy of yours, huh?"
"Yeah. My best friend, actually. We meet a long time before the war."
Bruce shoots him a sympathetic look and Iakona jumps down to touch noses with Ally. "So, Tony was yelling earlier about you breaking a table? Natasha didn't look too pleased either."
Steve winces, "Yeah, I lost it a little bit. I just - I don't understand..."
"How S.H.I.E.L.D could hide this from you? If they had told you, you would have gone after him right away, right?"
"Without a second thought."
"They knew that. They kept you right where they wanted you, which is why I spent so much of my life hiding from them. They don't care about you they just care about what you can do," Bruce says bitterly. His daemon winds herself around his legs and says something too quiet for Steve to hear.
"I'm not even angry about that, I'm angry with Natasha. She knew and she didn't say anything."
"Maybe she didn't want to hurt you," Iakona says softly, tail twitching. Steve wants to believe that. He smiles weakly, “Yeah, maybe.” He looks back at Bucky and he just looks so damn lonely laid out like that. “Bruce,” he asks quietly. “Do you think daemons can survive without their humans?”
“Well, there was a case I read about a long time ago; a man’s daemon fell down a cliff in a jungle in Borneo. Took them a month to find each other, they were weak as hell but alive. I read about what happened to Bucky, I read a lot about Red Skull’s experiments too when I was - uh - doing my own research into the serum. Red Skull was close, closest I’ve ever seen. And the serum affects daemons too, Bucky doesn’t feel severed. There’s a good chance his daemons somewhere out there.”
“We’ll find her, Steve,” Ally says quietly. “We know she’s in the city. It can’t be that hard.”
There a soft bleep and JARVIS says, “Mr Rogers, Mr Banner, Tony would like me to inform you the Agent Hill and several others have arrived to take Mr Barnes.”
Ally growls low in her throat, “Let them try.”
-
Maria Hill’s daemon is a kingfisher sitting unmoving on her shoulder. Steve has never known his name, has never seen him exhibit the slightest bit of fear or apprehension or uncomfortableness but right now, facing down Ally he ruffles his wings and clears his throat.
“You’re not taking him,” Steve repeats. Bruce and Tony are behind him, Clint and Natasha on either side. Vikenti is hissing, Mena and Kahu are clacking their beaks in warning. The two agents Hill brought with her are trembling slightly.
“With all due respect, Captain Rogers, I’m under orders. We can do this the easy way or the hard way but one way or another I am taking Sergeant Barnes to a S.H.I.E.L.D facility. It’s for his own good and yours as well,” Hill says enunciating each word carefully.
“No,” Steve says, “No, you’re really not.”
“It’s not safe to have him around - ” Hill begins.
“We dealt with him just fine,” Natasha says quietly. “We’re definitely more equipped to deal with him than you.”
Hill looks like she's trying very hard not to start shooting people, "Agent Romanov," she begins sharply but Vikenti raises himself and spits at her and she flinches just a little (just enough.) She purses her lips and her daemon leans in to whisper in her ear. “I’m calling Director Fury,” She says before stalking out of the room.
Tony claps Steve on the shoulder once she’s gone and says, “I like this you, Cap. Gets me all tingly.”
-
“He doesn’t remember you,” Natasha says quietly. They’ve moved Bucky up to one of the unused bedrooms, still cuffed and drugged and Steve just can’t get used to the fact that Aneira isn’t with him. He’d woken up briefly, sworn at them, caught Clint with a nasty right hook, drawn a knife out of nowhere. Steve had frozen, Alessia had whimpered. There hadn’t been anything of Bucky in the Winter Soldier’s eyes, in the gravelly Russian he’d spat.
“He will,” Steve says back, voice rough with exhaustion. He has. Natasha makes a soft noise that might be agreement or might be disbelief but then she says, “I am sorry, you know.”
Steve knows but it doesn’t make it any better.
“He was important to me too,” she says and Vikenti drops from where he was coiled around her wrist to the bed, slithering across to stare at Bucky’s still face. “I wanted him to stay out of this.” She huffs then and sits down in the chair beside Steve, crossing her legs carefully. “What was she like?”
It takes Steve a few moments to realise she’s asking about Aneira. “She was…” beautiful, funny, just a little feral, loyal, my best friend’s soul. “Brilliant.” He finishes lamely and Ally sits up and shoves her head in his lap. “Did he ever, you know, try to find his daemon?” he asks, fingers buried in Ally’s fur. God, he must have been so lonely.
Natasha cocks her head slightly, “I asked him about it once, I thought he’d get angry but he didn’t. He just looked sad. He said he wasn’t sure what happened to her, that they kept telling him he’d never had a daemon but he didn’t believe them.”
Steve nods. Annie must have been so frightened.
“She was a wolf, right?” Natasha asks suddenly, “A wolf with blue eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I saw her once,” she says thoughtfully. “In Russia. We were on a mission, I kept seeing a wolf shadowing us. I thought she might have been one of Their daemons checking up on us…”
“We saw her too,” Ally says, ears pricking. “We should find her, Steve! I bet it’d help him remember!”
“That’s actually a good idea,” Natasha says, standing. “Where did you last see her?”
“I was jogging, I’m not sure if - ” Steve mumbles, running a hand through his hair. Ally is standing now, tail thumping on the floor, “Come on Steve! If anyone can find her it’s us!”
Steve looks at her then back at Bucky.
“I’ll watch over him,” Natasha says immediately.
“No,” Steve mutters. “Not you. How do I know you won’t just turn him over to Fury?”
She actually looks kind of hurt, takes a step back and on the bed Vikenti spits. “How dare you,” he hisses. Natasha holds up a hand to silence him, sets her jaw, “Nyet, Vik,” she says softly. “I understand. But you should know that I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. Or you.”
Ally woofs quietly at her and Steve might be being harsh but this is Bucky and he’s not losing him again. “I’ll get Bruce,” he says. “If he’s gone when I get back - ” he breaks off, doesn’t need to finish.
Natasha nods, “He won’t be.”
-
Steve steps out of the tower and finds that at some point in however long he’s been sitting by Bucky’s bed the sun has risen. It’s strange standing on the sidewalk watching people drift off to work or school or wherever like today is a normal day.
“It is to them,” Ally says softly, leaning into his side.
Steve knows this but it doesn’t stop it feeling strange, feeling like it did when he’d wake up eighty years ago in his empty apartment knowing that somewhere in the world there was a war going on. That men would die and kill and wake up in foxholes and hastily put up tents. That men were fighting while he was grocery shopping and going to the cinema.
Ally shakes herself, “So, where do we start?”
And Steve realises he has no idea.
-
They walk the streets for hours, check alleyways and abandoned buildings, anywhere a wolf could hide. “Maybe she wasn’t here after all,” Ally says morosely as they trapse through park after park. “Maybe we imagined her.”
Steve’s not going to tell her that that’s what he’s been worrying about ever since they saw her weeks ago in the aftermath of an alien war (because she already knows that) and his phone chooses that moment to buzz with string of text messages from Tony varying from annoyed to frantic to if you don’t get your patriotic butt back here Fury is going to steal your assassin boyfriend away and possibly drop me from the Avengers rosta.
Steve sighs. Tugs at his hair. Growls.
There’s a little girl watching him, daemon a red squirrel on her shoulder. She should definitely be in school but Steve’s not going to point that out because there’s a woman a few feet away yelling on her phone that is probably the kid’s mother. “You’re Captain America,” she breaths and Steve shoots her a weak smile.
He doesn’t get recognised that often. He’s grateful for that.
The kid takes a few steps towards him and beckons for him to lean down, which he does, and she whispers, “Are you looking for a bad guy?”
Steve chuckles and Alessia wags her tail, “No, kid, not today.”
She looks disappointed, “Oh. I thought ‘cos you looked so sad you might have been…”
“No, I’m looking for…” he pauses, searching for the right phrasing, “something an old friend lost. Something real important to him.”
“Oh, must be really important then.”
Steve nods, “Yeah, I think it might help him.”
She frowns, “How come he needs help?”
“He...uh…” He looks to Ally inclines her head. “He doesn’t remember who he really is.”
“Like a curse?” she asks, brow furrowed.
“Yeah, kid, a curse.”
Her face brightens, “Well, that’s easy then!”
And Steve blinks at her, “What’s easy?”
“Breaking a curse!” she says, smiling. “True loves kiss, silly! That always works.”
Behind him Ally chokes with laughter and Steve finds himself sniggering, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She nods and her daemon flickers into a blue jay, “I’ve gotta go, good luck!” And she turns to run back to her mother. Steve straightens as she scampers off and Alessia shoves her nose into her hand, “Well that’s sorted then,” she says, “All we need to do is find someone to kiss him and he’ll be fine.”
“We should head back soon,” is all he says and then he sighs. He really had thought they might find her.
“You woulda thought,” Ally remarks as they head on down the path, “That she woulda come to find us. I mean she must know that we’d never hurt Bucky, right?”
“Maybe she didn’t know where to find us,” Steve suggests.
“Maybe she went home,” Ally says softly. They’ve checked all their old hangout spots, or at least the ones that are still standing, they checked the building that used to be their orphanage, the dance halls they used to frequent, the art school Steve went to before the war began. Their old apartment building has been gone for years, it’s an office block now, harsh and cold and corporate, but it’s worth a shot.
-
They hop on a train to Brooklyn and stare up at the building that used to be home. It’s not like they haven’t been here before but every time they get here they’re frozen.
It was only a few years ago for them.
It doesn’t make sense.
“Where would you be if you were hiding here, Al?” he asks when the memories have faded into background noise. Ally is quiet for a few moments and then she says, “If I was hiding here - which I wouldn’t be - I’d - ” she breaks off, something’s caught her eye and then without warning she charges off yelling, “Come on, Steve!”
He stumbles after her as she darts through the tight streets and alleys, loses her for a few minutes and when he catches up she’s crouched by a bush lining the side of a building, tail wagging at a million miles per hour. “She’s here, Steve! She’s here!”
Steve falls to his knees to peer through the leaves. Aneira is crouched by the building, as far away from them as she can be, teeth exposed in a half-hearted snarl. Her fur is matted, she’s rail thin and Steve finds himself reaching for her before he’s even really processed what he’s doing. She ducks away from his hand and he draws it back, flushing slightly. (He’s touched her before in the heat of battle, to yank her out of the way of a bullet and he still remembers that explosion at his fingertips, that sudden swell of warmth in his chest, the way Bucky had almost fallen over.)
“Aneira,” he breathes.
She growls at him, “Stay away, Steve. You’re working with them, you’re working with S.H.I.E.L.D!”
Crap, Steve thinks.