“What have I done?”
Chapter Warning for: dissociation, violence, murder.
Bucky walked down the sidewalk, sticking to the edges, with a feeling that something was going to happen.
It wasn’t a power he had, it was just… it was a feeling born of a hundred years of fighting.
Something was going to happen and the kid couldn’t get hurt.
Howard’s grandson wasn’t in the city, Bucky had followed him to a spot just outside the city where he was flying around on a broomstick with Sirius, his dad, and the really fast one.
Magic.
Bucky had seen a lot of weird shit before, but magic was almost impossible to wrap his mind around. It shouldn’t be, what was magic aside from just some less scientific enhancement?
But it was still weird.
It was weird walking around the city without the kid too. Bucky had thought that he was someone just destined to be alone, hookups in a bar not really counting, but then he sort of began looking forward to seeing the kid he was supposed to protect.
At least, Bucky looked forward to it when he could remember where he was and what he was doing.
Too many times Bucky had woken up in a place he didn’t remember going to with nothing but darkness in his mind on how he got there.
“… Stark.”
“…Potter…”
Bucky’s ears pricked up when he had bypassed an alley between a smoke shop and a liquor store.
Potter was… Bucky tried to sift through memories, some real, some not… Potter was Harry’s other dad‘s last name.
Yes!
James Potter.
Bucky remembered because Harry mentioned once that he always called him Bucky because James made him think of his dad.
Which meant that if someone was discussing a Stark and Potter, it meant the kid.
It didn’t take much effort to quickly loop around and climb up on the roof of the liquor store, walking on silent and trained feet to get intel on whoever had been discussing the Stark that was under Bucky’s protection.
There were three of them, all dressed in some god damned weird cape dress things, like some sort of slash between the priests that used to visit Bucky’s elementary school and vampires.
Every Catholic raised kid’s truest nightmare.
“I don’t think we’re going to just run up in that building, snag the brat, and leave,” one of them hissed to the others. “Muggles have electric city, you know. And I read about the bloke, he’s got bloody Thor locked up as a weapon.”
“Excellent,” another one, the tallest of the three with a voice like oil, sneered. “Then perhaps you can return to our Lord and inform him that you feared muggles too much to assist us in bringing him Potter.”
“Scared?” The third one cackled out a laugh. “Lucius, be real, this is a punishment. You didn’t get the prophecy and our Lord sent us on a suicide mission to make up for it. We’re the ones who had to dig up the shite on Stark, he’s not a normal muggle.”
“Our orders were clear,” the tall one, Lucius apparently, said stiffly. “We grab the brat, take him to our Lord, and see the end of Potter once and for all.”
Unfortunately for them, those orders directly conflicted with Bucky’s and Bucky didn’t fail missions. HYDRA could send anyone they wanted to take the kid and Bucky could best them all.
HYDRA wanted a super soldier and they got one, it wasn’t Bucky’s fault that they never safe guarded against defection.
Bucky jumped from the rooftop and had one of the men in a chokehold before the other two even noticed him.
“Who are you?” Bucky growled. He squeezed his neck hard, threatening to twist it until it broke with a flex of his arm.
“Who— Malfoy!” The man gasped and sputtered and Bucky used him as a shield when the tall one waved something that sent sparkling red air toward them.
Magic.
Wizards.
The fight started and Bucky relished in the comfort of it.
There was nothing like a fight to wake Bucky up and clear the fog from his mind.
One of the wizards fled, Bucky went to snap the other one’s neck while the third got a magic shot off that sliced through Bucky’s jeans.
Bucky hissed and unwittingly loosened his grip on the wizard he had. Normal knives, normal bullets, didn’t hurt.
Whatever the wizard used that had Bucky’s skin burning and blood pouring from a cut was anything but ‘normal’.
Magic was so goddamned weird.
“How do you always get yourself in the most fucked up situations?”
Bucky looked up from where he’d stumbled, spotting a familiar red and blue mask staring at him.
… the person had a name, Bucky knew that, but the pain brought the fog back and Bucky was in the HYDRA base, holding on to the last of his strength while his men screamed from their torture.
“Barnes, Barnes, you have to hold on,” Maxwell said from the cage beside Bucky. “Don’t leave us now, Sarg. You hear me?”
Bucky was already leaving.
There was nothing left to hold on to.
“Just hold on, man, Harry’s coming. Just hold on, okay? Don’t die. Fuck…”
Harry…
“You done shagging my godfather?”
Bucky turned around and saw the kid that Sirius talked about, his godson, glaring at him from the steps of Stark Tower.
His name was Harry, but… but just looking at the shape of his jaw and the curve of his lips made Bucky imagine someone else.
The kid looked like Howard and Bucky knew that his past would catch up with him.
“Hey, man, Bucky?” Someone slapped Bucky on the face, dragging him from the past and to a present that smelled like cinnamon and blood.
Bucky blinked and saw a kid’s face in front of him…
Peter.
Harry called him Peter.
“We grab the brat, take him to our Lord, and see the end of Potter once and for all.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Bucky couldn’t think, he couldn’t.
They were going to take Howard’s grandson back to their base and they were going to kill him.
HYDRA was going to take Tony Stark’s son from him after having the Winter Soldier take his parents.
HYDRA wanted Tony Stark to suffer and Bucky had to make it up somehow. If HYDRA took Harry, then Bucky was a monster and Stark was alone and—
Bucky didn’t remember grabbing the knife from his pocket or flicking it open. Bucky didn’t remember jabbing it in the soldier’s stomach.
All Bucky knew was that his mission had been compromised and Harry Stark needed removed from the battlefield before he became a casualty.
The air around him was thick with static, suffocating him in the tank again, while Bucky removed thought and emotion from the situation.
Remove the asset.
Clear the field.
Save Howard’s grandson.
They needed supplies to leave and they needed them quickly.
Bucky found everything he needed at the store advertising ‘the best guns in the state’.
A bag filled with the kind of weapons that Sergeant Barnes would have wept like a damn baby to wield in war.
Weapons so sleek that Bucky could hide them without trying.
Silencers that would take enemies down without alerting anyone of their presence.
Clips of ammo that Bucky would never go through. Sharpshooters didn’t need fifty bullets, they needed one bullet and a prayer to God.
“You take your shot and pray you were faster than the enemy, Private Barnes. All a man needs up here is one bullet and a prayer to God.”
Bucky had passed the weapons portion of training with ease and pride.
There was car parked outside that just needed a couple of wires clipped and twisted before it started.
All that was left was locating the target.
Bucky found the kid he needed when he returned to his base of operations.
I’m sorry, Bucky apologized when he struck the kid and dragged his body out to the escape vehicle.
I’m sorry, he said again when he saw the kid laying in the backseat. Harry didn’t look like magic and fire laying here, he looked like a kid.
Just a kid caught up in a war where his enemies wanted him dead.
Kids shouldn’t be in wars.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said as he climbed in the drivers seat and drove away with the kid.
Driving was easy, simple.
Bucky used to love to drive, back when Bucky loved things.
It was less fun to drive when he knew he was being followed, he could feel it, but Bucky used the kid’s even breathing in the backseat to keep himself focused on the mission and began evasive maneuvers. Wizards could cut things without a knife, but they didn’t seem able to drive, so Bucky figured he had something of an advantage as he tore out of state and began heading to a safe place.
By the time he hit Virginia, Bucky felt confident that he’d shaken the wizard tailing him and knew it was time to change cars.
Just keep going… get him away then go clear the field… Bucky reminded himself when his brain itched and all his senses screamed at him to go back and eradicate the threats then and there. No harm can come to the kid… no harm can come to the kid…
Помнить.
Harry began to stir when they were about fifty miles from Tennessee. It started slow, just an interruption of his breathing pattern that had kept Bucky calm for so many miles, and then Bucky cringed when he could hear and smell Harry throwing up in the back.
Blood? Great.
Guts? No problem.
Puke was a different story though.
“Are you okay?” Bucky asked hesitantly. The kid had a temper and Bucky knew his own small grasp of sanity was shaky at best and slipped away like sand between his fingers when he had to fight with people.
Screaming and fighting did nothing but drag Bucky back to when he’d been just James, just some nobody kid with dreams of getting away from his shit life through the glory of war.
James was an idiot and Bucky was sometimes glad that he’d died long ago.
“Bucky…”
Bucky glanced up in the mirror when he could feel Harry’s eyes boring in it.
“Where are we?” Harry asked slowly.
Bucky glanced at the mile markers, reassuring himself of their location.
“Nearly to Tennessee,” he said confidently. “We’ll have to stop soon and change cars. Are you hungry?”
Teenagers needed to eat, even Bucky knew that. And Bucky knew that scrawny teenagers with big eyes and bony wrists had to eat even more often.
It seemed as if Harry needed a moment to process things, which made sense because Bucky frequently needed time to think things through when he could.
Then the kid screamed, shrilly enough that Bucky’s skin prickled uncomfortably.
“DID YOU FUCKING STAB PETER AND KIDNAP ME?!”
Bucky wanted to wince at the accusation that made him sound like the Winter Soldier - he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. If Harry lived, the Winter Soldier could die - but someone needed to stay calm and it clearly wouldn’t be the kid that time.
“Mission status changed,” Bucky said simply. There wasn’t any need to terrify the kid, not while Bucky had it in hand. The kid hadn’t seen him at his worst, not even when he touched Bucky and paid for it with a broken arm, but Bucky knew that he could keep him safe.
There was no reason to panic.
Except the kid was panicking and the most Bucky could do was let him work out his own broken wires while Bucky drove him closer to safety.
And then a few minutes later, Harry jeopardized their mission by flinging himself out of a car going nearly 175 and down a ditch.
Bucky slammed on the brakes and fought against the war happening in his head—
He’s dead.
Nobody survives that.
Even if he survived, they could have found him.
Save the kid.
Howard Stark cannot die.
—as he ran full speed toward the body laying on the ground letting out pathetic cries of pain.
Fuck…
Bucky didn’t remember a lot from his days as a makeshift medic on the field, the Winter Soldier never needed to patch anyone up, but Harry’s leg looked twisted with splintered bone sticking right out of the skin. They would have called it a dead-man’s break in the field, but Bucky couldn’t let Harry be a dead man.
“Are you insane?!” Bucky hissed, his fear coming through as anger. “You can’t jump from a fucking moving car! Do you have any idea how fast I was driving?!”
The kid wasn’t crying though, he was just… whimpering.
Who set your pain tolerance? Bucky wondered idly, thinking of his own father.
“People don’t touch me. They just don’t. And when they do…”
“They’re doing it to hurt you. I get it.”
Bucky bent down to grab Harry, lift his broken body from the ditch, and the kid turned his head and threw up all over Bucky’s chest.
Disgusting.
Bucky couldn’t focus on the puke dripping down his chest, soaking through his shirt, because Harry’s eyes rolled back in his head and the kid went entirely limp in his arms.
So far, Bucky was doing a bang up job of keeping the kid safe.
When Bucky stopped to change cars, he found an EMS station nearby and hurried to grab supplies that Harry needed.
Ambulances were left unlocked so often that it was as if they wanted the public to access their supplies.
And if they wanted Harry to live as much as Bucky did, then who was Bucky to turn them down?
Harry moaned weakly when Bucky set his leg in the new SVU he stole. The sutures from the ambulance weren’t ones Bucky was familiar with, but he made do as he stitched up the ripped skin after forcing the bone back in. Bucky tried to measure Harry’s weight to get the right dose of pain medicine, but they never jacked around with it in the field.
“WRAP IT AND GO!”
“TAKE COVER! ENEMY FIRE!”
“I CANT MOVE HIM, GENERAL!”
“THEN LEAVE HIM AND GO, BARNES!”
“I’m sorry, private,” Bucky breathed after injecting Harry with enough pain medicine to hopefully see him through the rest of the trip. Staring at Harry’s cut jeans covered in blood made Bucky’s head spin and his neck to begin sweating.
In a moment of impulsivity, Bucky robbed a small shop- a yellow building with only one car out front -and got Harry new clothes, himself a clean shirt, extra clothes for them both, and enough food to get Harry through the trip.
The news was on in the store and Bucky saw his own face alongside Harry’s on an Amber alert.
Stark worked quick.
It was disturbing, stripping and redressing a teenager, but Bucky treated it clinically as he had in the field and got it over with quickly.
Bucky listened to Harry’s deep breathing while he drove, letting his mind drift.
Sometimes things ran so muddled in his head that it felt like he’d lived for ten years instead of a hundred.
On a good day, Bucky was in the present and he was free of his chains and past.
On the bad days, Bucky was ten and running to Steve with a black eye and two sisters who didn’t survive the war.
Civilian casualties were a part of life.
Civilian slaughters were a part of Bucky’s life.
Bucky went from one fight to another for his entire life.
It was his dad, a drunken disappointment.
It was the Germans, killing their own people to purify their world.
It was HYDRA, by Steve’s side.
It was HYDRA’s enemies, commanded to not have a conscious.
The fights never ended because wars couldn’t be won.
And each fight left a scar on his mind and his soul until he couldn’t trust his own thoughts anymore.
“I’m with you until the end.”
“BUCKY!”
“Siri?”
Bucky startled, his mind smacking him back to reality with a slurred word from a sick kid.
“Sorry, kid, it’s still me,” Bucky told him regretfully. Siri must be Sirius, Harry loved Sirius.
Bucky could have.
There was something dark in the back of Sirius Black’s grey eyes, something that Bucky knew lurked in his own.
Bucky recognized it when they met, but men don’t tend to forgive you after you’ve nearly snapped their arms.
Harry forgave Bucky, but that kid was more messed up than Bucky was.
“What’s… what’s going on?” Harry asked slowly, sounding as if he’d had a few too many drinks.
Bucky turned to look at him and saw huge pupils staring back at him, just barely ringed with green.
“You’re high,” Bucky laughed. “Sorry about that, I wasn’t sure how much you weighed so I guessed.”
High was better than hurting though.
Harry peeked his head up front and Bucky saw him eyeing the bag of medical supplies he’d swiped that sat in the passenger seat.
“Did you rob a hospital?” Harry asked.
“An ambulance, actually,” Bucky said nonchalantly. “I set your leg and sutured it and grabbed some extra doses of dilaudid. Your jeans were trash and you threw up on me, so I grabbed some clothes too.”
Harry nodded his head. “From… an ambulance?”
Jesus.
Bucky really overshot that dose of dilaudid.
“Nah, I stopped and grabbed some clothes and food from a store,” he explained patiently. “You thirsty?”
Harry nodded slowly and Bucky snagged a bottle of water to hand to him. Dehydration was a bitch and the kids needed his strength.
“Should I expect to die from poison?” Harry asked after he chugged half the bottle.
Bucky’s eyebrows rose of their own accord when he looked up at the rearview mirror to the kid.
“Why would I poison you?” he asked. How high was the kid? “I’m saving you. They were following us for a while, but we lost them back in Virginia.”
Aside from that, Bucky liked the kid. They were friends of a sort, something linked them together. Bucky wasn’t going to poison him, fuck.
“Who was following us?” Harry asked in a high pitched voice. “HYDRA? My dad? Peter?! WHO WAS FOLLOWING US, BUCKY?!”
“Wizards,” Bucky said. He forgot the kid hadn’t been there when he found them. “They work for HYDRA and they planned on taking you back to their base for execution. A thank you wouldn’t kill you,” he added as a weak attempt at a joke.
Harry began laughing hysterically.
“Thank you?!” Harry repeated. “You want me to thank you for throwing away my dad‘s cloak, killing my friend, and kidnapping me to save me from WIZARDS WORKING FOR HYDRA?! Fuck you,” Harry spat cruelly. “You’ve fucking lost the plot, mate.”
Bucky calmed himself down, he couldn’t break away right then.
“I thought you didn’t like Peter?” Bucky asked, trying to bring some calm to the conversation before Bucky slipped away.
“Does it matter?” Harry asked tiredly. “You killed him, Bucky. You killed a kid.”
“Clear the field, Sargent.”
“They’re- they’re just kids…”
Bucky stared at the three kids with dark hair and hollow eyes, praying in a language he didn’t recognize.
If there was a God, he didn’t want these kids to die.
Kids died in war, but God put the gun in his hands and his commanding officer said to shoot.
“Our orders are clear. Clear the field.”
“I’m sorry,” Bucky told the kids. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
In a battle between God and War, War always won.
War won because it was ruthless and didn’t care about children who wanted to live.
Bucky’s thoughts were so focused on the past, the lives he didn’t save - the lives he took - that it took him a moment to recognize the sniffle from the backseat.
Harry’s cheeks had thin trails of tears on them and his eyes were faraway, locked in his own hell.
“Harry,” Bucky called gently, not wanting to startle him. “Hey, are you crying? Harry?”
Harry blinked and Bucky watched him pull himself from his own nightmare.
“No,” Harry lied. He wiped his face off and Bucky felt his chest clench at the childlike action. “I’m great, really, this might be the best day of my life. It’s right up there with the time my uncle dislocated my shoulder.”
Bucky’s hand clenched on the steering wheel hard, cracking the plastic beneath his grip.
Whoever the uncle was, he had to wait. Bucky was on a mission—
I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.
—and the mission always came first.
“Smartass,” Bucky scoffed, knowing the kid didn’t want pity. ‘Victims’ never wanted pity, they wanted to pretend they were soldiers.
Sometimes they went on to become soldiers.
“That kid isn’t dead, by the way,” Bucky told Harry truthfully. “I saw him on the news.”
“What?” Harry’s head popped right up in the back and Bucky withheld a flinch at the quick motion. “You saw Peter on the news?”
“Yeah, he was with Steve and Tony,” Bucky explained, relieved that Harry wasn’t screaming anymore. “You’re uh… you’re officially a missing person,” he admitted.
And Bucky was a kidnapper, which was the nicest thing anyone had ever called him.
“How long have we been gone?” Harry asked.
“About twelve hours.”
“And where are we?”
Bucky checked the road sign. “Memphis.”
“Where is Memphis?” Harry asked, really sounding like a foreigner then. Bucky didn’t laugh because he knew how it felt to be the stranger in a strange place.
“We’re in Tennessee,” Bucky explained. “We’re about three hours from Texas.”
Everyone knew where Texas was. It was a state that was hard to miss.
“Is that where we’re going?” Harry asked, finally sounding calm.
Bucky fed off the kid’s own calmness, relishing in the cool blue it washed his brain in.
“Mier is our final destination. I know some guys down there, they’re not allied with HYDRA.”
They could get Bucky through the border and that was all he needed.
“Right… right… and Mier is in Texas?”
Bucky’s lips twitched, the kid really sucked ass at Geography.
“Mexico.”
All the blue in Bucky’s brain was pushed out by hot red when Harry screamed abruptly from the backseat.
“I AM NOT GOING TO FUCKING MEXICO!” he yelled. “Bucky, turn around and take me home,” Harry said harshly, his eyes watering from the smack. “We do not need to go to Mexico. We need to go home.”
Bucky didn’t even have a home.
Bucky had… he had nothing but this one mission that mattered more than anything else.
And the mission meant that Harry would get home eventually when it was safe again.
Bucky would make sure of it.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Bucky told him. “I have to get you to a safe location then I can complete the mission and you can go back, okay?”
Everything was going to be fine.
Complete the mission, save the target.
The mission came first.
Save Howard’s grandson, eradicate HYDRA, take the kid home.
Tony Stark lost enough, he wouldn’t lose his son.
Before the sun could start to rise, Bucky knew it was time to change cars. He took the next exit for a city that he saw, mentally thinking about finding a big enough vehicle for Harry to try and rest and relax.
“Where are we?” Harry asked dully, sounding like he was in pain.
“We’re just changing out cars before places start opening up,” Bucky said. He glanced up and met Harry’s eyes in the mirror and raised his eyebrows. “You want food and something for the pain?”
“Yes to food, no to being high,” Harry snapped with a petulant little scowl. “I’m hoping eventually you’ll wake up from your episode and we can discuss going the fuck home.”
Bucky sighed. It always came back to that.
It always came back to the ‘episodes’.
“Yeah, sure, we’ll go back to New York so those wizards can kidnap you and Tony can kill me,” Bucky snorted with a roll of his eyes. “Anyone ever tell you that you suck at making plans?”
Harry would be a crap soldier.
It was good that Bucky would never let him enter the field.
Stark probably wouldn’t either; Howard never pushed his son in the military, hopefully Stark followed his fathers path to a degree.
“I’ll be right back,” Bucky told Harry. “Just keep quiet.”
When Harry nodded silently, Bucky slipped out to grab a new car.
When Bucky returned, Harry was gone and Bucky couldn’t breathe.
He’s dead.
They took him.
They’re torturing him, breaking his mind, unmaking him.
Howard’s in the tank-
He can’t breathe.
They’re taking his memories, his very essence.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Howard!” Bucky found Howard - Howard, Anthony, Tony. “Please, I have a son!” - not Howard, but Harry at the end of a trail of blood that led to a gas station.
The kid was scared, he wasn’t a soldier.
I am an American soldier.
Bucky had to do some fast talking to erase Harry’s terrified shouts from the gas stations mind. It wasn’t hard, Bucky just channeled every person who ever called him a raving lunatic.
People didn’t care about the truth, they cared about who gave them the calmer story.
Bucky didn’t usually win that fight, but against a fifteen year old doped up on pain killers, it wasn’t hard.
“Look, I know you’re freaking out, but you’re hurt and you’re not thinking straight,” Bucky murmured as he quickly carried Harry from the gas station to the new van. “I swear, as soon as it’s safe, I’ll take you back, okay?”
You weren’t meant to make promises, not in war, but Bucky would make sure this kid lived.
If Tony Stark’s son lived, the Winter Soldier could die.
“I hate you,” Harry moaned when Bucky gently put him in the back of the van. The kid’s leg was wrecked again and Bucky had never seen an injury so gruesome—
There was Martins in Germany, when the bomb blew his chest cavity open.
There was Helmen in HYDRA captivity, his skin broiled off in an experiment.
Those were men.
Harry was a child.
Kids weren’t meant to be in a war.
“Missions aren’t always easy,” Bucky told Harry solemnly.
Missions with kids were the hardest.
Bucky got in the drivers seat and hit the closest exit to the freeway, needing to get back on track quickly.
“We’ll get out of here and I’ll reset your leg. You can’t walk on it, kid, you’ll do irreversible damage and you really don’t want to have it amputated.” Bucky held up his left arm, showing Harry proof of his own damage, and wryly added, “Trust me.”
Trust him that he would keep Harry safe.
Trust him that losing a limb sometimes felt like losing a part of himself.
Trust him that Bucky lost himself long ago and he still couldn’t find him.
“I’d rather have a peg leg than deal with your bloody delusions,” Harry said sharply. Bucky looked up to the mirror and saw that Harry had grabbed a sweater he bought for him and used it as a pillow for his head. “HYDRA didn’t send wizards to kill me. You’re a lunatic, Bucky. You need help.”
“You’re sick, Buck. You need help.”
“Let me help you.”
“You sound- you sound crazy, Buck.”
“You think I don’t know that I’m messed up?” Bucky asked Harry. “I live in my own fucking head, Harry. It’s not exactly a picnic up here.”
It was a battlefield and every misstep landed on a minefield that blew up and left Bucky questioning the ground that he used to be able to trust.
“Wah,” Harry said mockingly. “Poor Bucky and your trauma. Mate, MY LEG IS BROKEN!”
“My arm is metal,” Bucky said. As in- his entire arm had been ripped off. He would have loved to have a single break.
“You kidnapped me.”
“I saved you from wizards.”
“You stabbed my friend.”
“You said you hated him and he’s fine, remember?” Bucky reminded him.
“I never should have been nice to you,” Harry snapped. Bucky looked up and saw a petty little frown on Harry’s lips while his eyes were closed.
Nobody should be nice to Bucky.
Bucky wasn’t even human anymore, he was a monster.
“I don’t know why you were,” Bucky said honestly. He turned around so that Harry understood the weight of his truth. “But you were the first person in a long time to treat me like a human being. I can’t let you die, not like Howard. I won’t let them take you.”
Bucky had a very short list of people he would die for, it had dropped to practically none since he left the tank.
Steve.
Harry Stark.
That was it.
Bucky had one kid to protect, one kid to keep safe.
It was the only way to make it up to Tony Stark.
Harry snarked off a couple more smart remarks, it was probably why Bucky liked him so much, and then Bucky watched as the kid slowly drifted off to sleep.
Bucky drove fast, trying to speed past traffic jams and diverting around anything that looked like a road block.
Harry started sweating just inside Texas, his eyelids flickering and tiny whimpers escaping his mouth.
“We’ll be there soon,” Bucky assured him softly. “We’re close. I’ll get rid of the wizards and you’ll be safe. You won’t die, not like- not like Howard.”
Tony gets to keep his son.
Bucky talked to Harry when he started getting sick, trying to calm him down. All he did was share stories, trying to keep Harry’s mind off whatever illness was plaguing him that had him sweating and shivering, puking and twitching.
Bucky didn’t even know what he was saying, not until Harry asked a quiet question.
“You- you killed Tony’s parents?”
Bucky looked up and saw hazy eyes blinking slowly at him. Harry looked so out of it, it might be Bucky’s only chance at any sort of confession.
“I SAW YOU WITH THAT BOY, JAMES! CONFESS YOUR SINS!”
Good Catholics believed in absolution through confession and repentance.
Bucky was repenting through saving Tony’s kid, all he had left was confession.
“I did,” he said quietly, watching the road. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Please, I have a son!”
“Howard! HOWARD!”
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said again. He said it until the words were meaningless and Harry was twitching in his sleep again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Nobody ever understood that Bucky was so fucking sorry.
He was sorry for what he did.
He was sorry for who he was.
Bucky was sorry for being born.
When they were twenty miles from the border, Bucky knew it was time to find passage through to Mexico.
It wasn’t ideal, but nothing in war ever was.
Bucky secured a truck that would keep Harry from being detected and he had to push his emotions away when he grabbed the kid to move him.
“Almost there, kid,” Bucky said quietly. He hated how limp Harry was, he hated moving the produce and placing Harry beneath them, masking his scent from the canine units that would be at the border.
Harry let out a quiet cry, “Dad…” and Bucky swore that kid would make it back to his father.
The rest of the trip was a blur.
Bucky didn’t remember crossing the border, he didn’t remember his contact letting him pass through with a small nod.
Bucky didn’t remember booking the motel under a fake name with cash he took from the register the last time he stopped to get Harry food.
Bucky didn’t remember putting Harry on a bed, a single tear escaping him when he saw how bruised and battered the kid was.
He looked like a soldier and Bucky was trying to keep him from war.
“I’ll be back soon,” Bucky promised. He smoothed the kid’s hair off his face, thinking of all the times he wished that someone would do it for him as a child when he’d been sick. “This will be fine,” he said, his eyes uneasy when they flicked toward Harry’s leg. “This will be fine.”
It… it was fine… it had to be.
It was better for Howard’s grandson to lose a leg than his life and Bucky could always get one of Stark’s friends to go get him much quicker than Bucky could. Or he could just call the motel, make an anonymous report, have the kid taken to the hospital and then tell Stark where his son was.
It was fine.
It had to be.
With the field cleared of unacceptable loss, Bucky wasted no time in getting back to New York. If he was lucky, he’d find the wizards quick.
As usual, luck wasn’t on Bucky’s side.
It was as if the world didn’t want Tony Stark’s kid to live, but Bucky wasn’t someone to bend the whims of the world.
Time was an irrational concept that Bucky had never paid much attention to, all he knew was that it had taken an annoyingly long time before he managed to find the wizards again.
The wizards were lurking in an alley near Stark Tower, two of them that time.
Bucky dropped in on them with his weapons drawn and relished in the comfort of killing one of them when he tried to bare his forearm, showing a twisted skull and snake tattoo.
The other one pulled his wooden stick from his pocket and Bucky had it in his hand before he could get cut again.
Injuries never hurt, not like—
“Dad…?”
“This will be fine.”
—other parts of the mission did, but Bucky didn’t want to give him a chance to attack. Bucky had the wooden weapon and snapped it, hoping to destabilize its power source.
“You filthy—”
Bucky twisted around, locking his arm on the soldier’s neck and putting his gun against the side of his skull.
“Take me to your base or you die,” Bucky whispered harshly, finally letting the Winter Soldier take control. The soldier would die either way, but Bucky needed a ride and this was the only one of the duo to show any sense of self-preservation as he went limp in Bucky’s grip.
“On your head,” the soldier sneered. Bucky tightened his lock on the soldier’s neck, ensuring he couldn’t run again, and then everything was black.
The mission, Sergeant. Protect the asset and eradicate HYDRA.
That was the mantra Bucky repeated as he was pulled through a black tube and spit out somewhere dark and then twisted away again before he was spit out someplace with cold air so sharp it cut through his skin.
It took nerves of… well, not steel, but iron… to keep his arm wrapped around the soldier’s neck, staying on his feet and not throwing up. Whatever method of travel the soldier’s were using was nauseating and Bucky didn’t care for it at all.
“Forward,” Bucky growled. “Now.”
The soldier marched onward, Bucky right behind him and allowing the man just enough air to breathe. They were at some swanky house, complete with black iron gates and privacy hedges. It was a weird place for HYDRA to hole up, but not any weirder than the cave in Berlin that they converted to a base.
Bucky had a gun strapped to his back, another holstered in his pocket. His jacket was loaded with ammo and a bullet was ready to fire against HYDRA’s soldier’s head.
They went to enter the house and Bucky calculated quickly- the soldier was too eager. The soldier thought that HYDRA would win if Bucky stepped through that door.
Which meant Bucky wouldn’t be stepping through it.
“If you scream, you die,” Bucky said flatly. “Understood?”
The soldier tensed up so Bucky dug the barrel of his pistol a little harder in the side of his head.
“Understood,” the man spat.
Bucky kept a firm hold on the man as they backed away from the door. Recon was needed before Bucky went barging in enemy territory.
That was a privates mistake.
Privates died because of their eagerness to face down the enemy.
True soldiers, men made of machine who were assets to their teams, knew that subtlety could take down the enemy more swiftly.
How many had the Winter Soldier killed? Hundreds? Thousands?
Howard and Maria Stark.
“Please, I have a son!”
No.
Bucky wasn’t some fresh faced kid with a gun and thoughts of glory; he had one opportunity to take down this base and he would do it or die trying.
Howard Stark’s grandson would live.
With his grip unyielding on the soldier, Bucky led him around the home, identifying points of entry and exit, silently gunning down another of the soldiers with the dark robe on.
The soldier he held hissed through his teeth, shocked when the bullet sliced neatly through his comrade’s forehead.
Bucky found what he wanted when they found the back of the house. There were thick and heavy curtains across a wall of windows and Bucky could hear screams on the inside—
Howard isn’t here.
They don’t have him.
They can’t have him.
The usefulness of the soldier had faded for the moment, but Bucky knew he would never find his way out without him.
“I’ll see you soon,” Bucky warned the soldier while he tightened his arm just enough to send him into unconsciousness. He hid his body in the bushes with the soldier whose eyes stared sightlessly upward with dried blood streaking his face in morbid tears.
With his enemies subdued, Bucky went back to that window and began a quiet climb up to the roof with his gun reloaded and ready to fire.
For anyone else, the silence would be maddening. For a fresh private just off the plane, their heart would be racing and their palms would sweat—
“I- I can’t do it, Sarg. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t—”
A folded flag and lies that they died in combat.
Uncle Sam’s kill count was one that not even the Winter Soldier could compete with.
—not Bucky.
Bucky had been trained for the kill for two men’s lifetimes.
Once he was perched securely on the rooftop, Bucky began seeking out an opening to enter the base. It was locked down good, Bucky would give them that, but he didn’t come all that way just to fail the mission.
When he found an unsecured point of entry, Bucky slipped inside it and found himself face to face with an experiment so twisted that it didn’t look human.
“P-please, sirs, Klem is only—”
Bucky put a bullet between its bulging eyes, catching it before it could hit the ground and sound any alarm.
“Rest in peace, brother,” Bucky whispered as he gently laid the experiment on the marble tiled ground.
Someone should have been there to put Bucky out of his misery before the Winter Soldier took hold and turned him into a monster.
Bucky focused on the current mission as he crept through the disgustingly rich looking house that smelled like death and echoed with screams.
The screams were too deep to be Howard— Harry; Harry was Stark’s son and he was waiting on Bucky to return —but they were screams of a man in terrible agony all the same.
During his trek to the back of the house, Bucky encountered two more of the twisted experiments, putting them both out of misery as easily as he had the first one. Whatever serum they were using hadn’t gave any advanced senses to the tiny things and they were simple, if not devastating, to put down.
Big hollow eyes staring at him in fear. Whispered prayers for savior from a God that didn’t exist only to be killed by the devil that man created.
As he neared the back of the house and the screams of the tortured man increased in volume, Bucky began seeking out alternative methods of entry.
If he had to guess- and guessing could be a costly mistake in all missions -he would say the back room was a meeting room of some sort. And where there were meetings, there were troops.
And these troops fired from wooden sticks made of magic and Bucky couldn’t be sure what all they were capable of.
The ceilings of the house were high open beams, an excellent place to perch to take enemies down from above, but they looked like they ended in each room. Bucky didn’t like his odds of clearing the base and eradicating the leader without capture if he just stepped through the large and dark wooden doors with engraved snakes on them where screams and jeers were the loudest.
Bucky didn’t like his odds at all - he hadn’t been briefed on magic enough - until a gift scampered through the doors with a whine and a limp.
All it took was one look from the shadows to see that they had successfully recreated the Winter Soldier, complete with a silver hand to mimic Bucky’s own. Bucky should have known HYDRA would try and rebuild him after he defected. Assets could not be lost and with the right serum, they could always be recreated.
Bucky never planned to fight himself outside of his own head, but if he could best the original Super Soldier, he could best this one.
The stakes were too high to lose.
Bucky stepped forward from the shadows with his gun raised and the soldier looked up with eyes full of shock.
“Who are—”
HYDRA was getting sloppy.
Kill first and question later was a commandment of being a soldier and that one lost his life for forgetting it.
Bucky tore the robe off his dead body and stared down at a pathetic man with a silver hand…
How many had he killed?
Did he ever regret it?
Did he know that the nightmares were coming for him?
Bucky moved his body to the side after donning his robe. If he pulled the hood down low and hunched his back, he could get at least eight seconds after entry to identify the leader and clear the field.
Eight seconds wasn’t much, but the Winter Soldier had done it faster.
Bucky knew that Howard would need proof of a completed mission upon his return, but he would have to come back for the soldier later…
If there was a later.
The kid cannot die.
The mission cannot fail.
Clear the field.
Bucky clicked another bullet in place and didn’t bother to take any sort of deep breath before entering.
Deep breaths were hesitation and the Winter Soldier didn’t hesitate.
Hesitate and die.
Worse- hesitate and fail.
Failure meant good men died and monsters conquered.
Failure meant escaping one hell for another.
I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.
Bucky hunched his shoulders and opened the door, the timer ticking away instantly.
One…
If he had ever worried that the leader of HYDRA, a man self-named Voldemort— “Why? You wanna test you and your metal arm and mad thoughts against Voldemort? Nice try, mate.” —according to the briefing, would be difficult to identify, he was wrong.
The man was no different than Red Skull with his enhancements marking him as something overpowered and confident.
Sure, he’d never get laid, but tyrants never seemed to consider that.
Two…
“Pettigrew, he told you to bring another from the dungeon,” someone hissed.
Three…
Bucky didn’t lift his head as he aimed the gun on instinct alone and shot them in the chest.
Four…
Everything stopped, just for a second.
For one second, it was silent.
Five…
Gunshots began to fill the room and there was a cold voice that screamed a command—
Six…
Bucky looked up and locked emotionless blue eyes with furious red.
Seven…
The leader raised his weapon—
Bucky raised his—
Stark’s son could not die.
Eight…
Bucky was faster.
Eight seconds wasn’t a lot of time, but the Winter Soldier had done it quicker before.
Time has no real meaning to him, it hadn’t mattered before the Winter Soldier took over and it never found importance again.
Time was gunfire and smoke.
Time was taking down the remaining soldiers inside the field before they fired their weapons and disappeared in thin air.
Time was blood and proof of a successful mission.
Time was a bag found in a bedroom closet, filled with two heads and a silver hand.
Time was waiting for his ride home to wake up, a barrel staring the man’s cold silver eyes down when he woke.
Bucky held up the head of HYDRA’s recent attempt at recreating the Winter Soldier in one hand and his weapon in the other.
“Take me back,” he ordered the man.
As soon as Bucky’s feet touched the ground in New York, he sent the bullet through the side of the man’s head.
No witnesses.
“There can be no witnesses. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
There was a second part of the mission, Bucky knew that. Bucky knew that eradicating HYDRA’s base and clearing the field was only part of the mission.
What am I forgetting? What am I forgetting?
Forgetting wasn’t usually the problem, remembering was, but Bucky knew he was forgetting something as he walked the streets with his bag and his weapons.
The field was clear.
The mission was—
Howard’s grandson.
Fuck.
Bucky was the asset of HYDRA, but Howard’s grandson was Bucky’s asset.
And assets had to be protected.
Bucky shivered then, a full head to toe shiver.
The kid had been pale… shaking… crying for his dad…
“I’ll be back soon,” Bucky promised. “This will be fine.”
It was meant to be fine.
Bucky cleared the field.
Bucky saved him.
Bucky’s hands were shaking when he looked down at them and saw the blood soaking them—
HYDRA’s blood infecting him.
They wanted to put him back in the tank.
“Mission report.”
“Field cleared successfully. Asset has died.”
“Mission failed.”
“What have I done?” Bucky whispered to himself. Bucky began scrubbing his hands on his jeans, trying desperately to get the enemy blood off him. “What have I done? What have I done? WhathaveIdone? Whathave—”
“That’s what we’re all wondering.”
Bucky looked up with wild eyes to see the kid he killed—
“Our orders are clear, Sergeant. Clear the field.”
—standing in front of him.
Bucky didn’t even think to duck before he was grabbed by a white sticky rope and slammed against a brick wall.
It was a mercy he didn’t deserve to have everything go so solidly black.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
*****
Sirius pulled his head from the pensieve with a gasp for air, feeling as if he had been drowning in Barnes’ messed up head.
Being inside Barnes’ thoughts like had the discomfiting side effect of making Sirius want to pity the prat.
And all of Sirius’ pity was back home with his godson.
Albus did the same a moment later, his face grave, but his eyes twinkling harder than Sirius had ever seen them before.
“First, I would like to ask how Harry is?” Albus asked Sirius after sinking down in one of the chairs around the table. Barnes had drifted off to sleep after Albus used a neat bit of magic to coax the memory from him.
Sirius sat down across from Albus, his mind whirling with what all they just saw.
“He’s sick,” Sirius said truthfully. “His… his leg, Albus, it’s gone.”
The sparkles in Albus’ eyes dimmed and as much as Sirius might not trust the old man, he was grateful all the same when Albus reached across the table to place a hand on Sirius’ arm.
“I am sorry to hear that,” Albus said. Sirius couldn’t even doubt his sincerity, not when Albus looked his age for the first time in Sirius’ memory. “It may not be a comfort to him now, but I’m certain that you and his father will be able to assure Harry that he is still an exceptional young man with or without two legs.”
Sirius nodded weakly, unsure how he was meant to do that. Harry’s self-worth was rubbish on a good day, and now he was hiding under a cloak from his friends.
Some breaks couldn’t be mended—
Not Azkaban for Sirius.
Not HYDRA for Barnes.
Sirius just had to hope that Harry having a family that loved him could somehow make a difference.
“And if that doesn’t work, perhaps I could convince Alastor to visit over the Christmas holidays,” Albus added with a small smile. “I have never had such a healthy level of fear for a man as I carry for Alastor.”
Sirius snorted quietly. Personally, he thought Alastor was just mad enough to think that Harry losing a leg was somehow a good thing. Sirius’ snort was just loud enough to cause Barnes to twitch in his sleep, an action that drew both Sirius and Albus’ eyes to him.
“In a twist of irony, Tom was not taken down by the boy who was fated to be his enemy, but his childhood fear,” Albus said quietly, his eyes somber as he studied Barnes.
Sirius tilted his head to the side, puzzled. “What? He was afraid of guns?”
It seemed like a weak fear for Voldemort, even as a child.
Sirius had always been afraid of his mother though, so maybe he shouldn’t be casting hexes.
Albus removed his glasses, wiping them off and he seemed to be deep in thought.
“Tom grew up in a muggle orphanage during the worst of the war,” Albus finally said. “It is perhaps a cruel irony that one of the soldiers he used to fear so harshly was able to put a temporary stop to his reign through such muggle methods.”
Albus had him for a moment, Sirius had nodded his head in understanding, and then he paused and replayed that comment in his mind.
“‘Temporary’?” Sirius asked, glancing significantly toward the bag. “Be a bit hard to cast any spells without a head, Albus.”
Albus smiled but there was no joy in the look. “Sirius, if you would grant me a day or two with both your soldier and his… trophies,” Albus added with a brief grimace, “I believe I can clear your name quite easily and inform the Ministry of what has transpired while they feigned ignorance.”
“And after that?” Sirius asked pointedly.
“And after that I believe I should sit down with you and Harry’s father; I have quite the story to share and I can think of no better team to assist me in permanently ending Tom than the Avengers.”