Purgatory: Ad Interim

For Steve, the past three months had been nothing but disappointment. He and Sam had traveled all over the world, sleeping when they could, running when they had to, trying to maintain a low profile on their hunt for Bucky. They had a jump on him, with all the information they had gotten from Natasha and the direction Hill and Fury were providing from… wherever they were. But he kept evading them. Trails ran cold, or turned out to be almost nonexistent.

Their first lead took them to San Juan, where a recent string of break-ins involving a man with seemingly inhuman strength had caught the eye of local authorities, who had dubbed him El Lobo Blanco. Steve and Sam spent two nights on a cargo ship, camped out in an empty loading container. After two weeks in San Juan, a shoot out on the pier, and a broken rib, they found no sign of Bucky. Only a Swedish gangster who was experimenting with a potent amphetamine and steroids.

Steve left him chained to a post for the police to find in the morning.

Their next mission landed them in Odessa, at an abandoned warehouse that HYDRA used to run biological experiments out of. The place appeared to be completely abandoned, similar to the base that Natasha and him had stumbled across Zola in. They checked it out anyway, searching for any sign that Bucky had once been there.

The first room they went through was full of filing cabinets and dust. They went through the files, combing over them, finding evidence of hundreds of experiments HYDRA had performed to try and recreate the super soldier formula. Evidence of the Red Room, of what they had done there. Steve couldn’t help himself: he searched for Natasha’s name. Her file was strangely missing.

There was no sign of Bucky. While Sam had made off with the files, loading as many as he could into the old Jeep they had “borrowed”, Steve searched the rest of the building.

That’s when he found him.

The man was older, probably around sixty or so, but still incredibly fit. He was in good fighting shape, or had been. When Steve found him, his body was strung up from the rafters, hands still gripping at the cables around his neck, face still struck with horror. It was clear Natasha had beaten them here.

He told Sam it was for insurance, but he lied. As they drove away, the warehouse going up in flames behind them, he did get some sick satisfaction watching it burn in the rearview mirror.

After Odessa there were a series of other dead ends, nothing even as close as they had been in San Juan. It was frustrating, exhausting, work. Steve wanted to give up. He wanted to quit. The search was making him feel angry and out of control. He was lashing out at Sam, he was mad at himself. He missed Natasha.

He missed Natasha.

That, in turn, made him more angry. She wouldn’t be able to help him right now. Wouldn’t be able to fix this. He wasn’t even sure she would be comforting. What had she said when they had last seen each other?

Call Sharon.

Ouch.

Steve felt like punching something all over again.

“You ready to go, man?” Sam called from the living room. Steve was laying on the single bed in the apartment they were squatting in (Sam had lost the coin toss that morning), stewing in the anger that was becoming quite familiar to him. They were in Buchanan, Liberia, which felt a bit on the nose, following the strongest lead they had gotten to date.

A pharmacy cashier (ex SHIELD, old friend of Hill) had sent her word of a mysterious man who had moved to town within the past few months. Always wore long sleeves, even in the blistering coastal heat, rarely seen around town. His neighbor, a girl who frequented the pharmacy, had whispered she had seen what appeared to be a metal arm attached to him when he was taking out the trash one night.

Sam and Steve had arrived in Buchanan a day ago, did some quick reconnaissance, and found out the apartment in question was registered to Rebecca Phillips.

“His sister’s name was Rebecca,” Steve had said, willing himself not to get his hopes up. “And our general-- General Phillips--,”

They had spent the night in an apartment about a mile away, planning their attack. Steve had spent the night pacing back and forth, nervously wringing his hands and trying not to think too much.

“I’m ready,” he called back. He pulled himself out of bed, grabbing a gun off the bedside table and strapping it to his side. He would forgo the shield today, it wasn’t exactly covert.

They made their way down the darkened street, towards an apartment building that sat just east of the coastline. This part of the city was unusually quiet-- it was almost unnerving.

“Rebecca Phillips’” building was completely dark. Scaffolding lined the west wall, with a rickety staircase leading up to the doors on the second floor. Apartment 209 was their target. There was a window facing the scaffolding, and what was probably a bedroom window around back. Sam took the back, scaling the fire escape with surprising ease.

Steve made his way around the front, throwing a glance over his shoulder. This whole thing felt too easy, from the alias to the execution.

“Are you in position?” came Sam's voice over the com.

Steve snuck up to the front door, peering through the darkened window. “Affirmative.”

“Contact in three… two… one.”

The sound of glass shattering echoed through the empty apartment as Steve crashed through the front door. He made eye contact with Sam, who had barreled through the bedroom window, and both raised their guns as they began to search the one bedroom.

Someone has been here, and recently. The bed still had a sheet on it, there was a glass in the sink, and the bathroom faucet dripped steadily in the silence. Still, there was no sign of Bucky. Steve felt the disappointment wash over him, and in anger he swung his hand into the wall.

“Fuck!”

He left behind a dent as he stalked over to the couch. Sam gave him space, walking through the apartment once more. Steve hung his head. They were so close.

“Are you looking for Beck?” came a voice from the front door. Steve instinctively raised his gun, but lowered it once more when he saw who the voice belonged to.

A young woman leaned against the door frame, wearing a simple shift and a head wrap. She was looking at them with an open expression, kindness behind her eyes. Steve stared back at her blankly.

“Beck?”

“The man who lived here,” she said. Her accent was thick, but her English was good. “He was tall, bigger. Long hair. Always wore long sleeves and a glove in his left hand.”

Where before the disappointment had been a wave, this time it was a gut punch. Steve fell back onto the couch, his head in his hands, crippled by the weight of his frustration.

“Do you know where he is?” Sam asked, emerging from the bedroom.

The girl shook her head. “He left yesterday. My sister saw him go down the fire escape with a duffel bag. He took his bike.”

“Your sister is very observant,” Sam said.

The girl smiled slightly. “Beck was fun to observe.”

Sam glanced over at Steve, who sat still with his head in his hands. “Any idea where he went?”

“No, but my sister might know. They talked a lot.” The girl disappeared for a moment before returning with an older woman, maybe early thirties. They had almost the exact same face.

“This is Hawa.” She pushed the woman forward. “Tell them what you know about Beck.”

Hawa took a pause at the sight of Steve and Sam. She studied them briefly.

“You are avengers,” she finally said. “I’ve seen you on the news. You’re looking for Beck?”

Sam nodded. “Anything you have on him, or where he might be going.”

“He left last night,” she began, “around ten or so. Didn’t say anything…”

She trailed off as Steve stood up. It was all too much for him, to be in this place. To have missed him by twenty four hours.

“I have to go,” he said to Sam. “I’ll see you back at the flat.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

The air was humid and altogether too warm. It made Steve feel claustrophobic, like he was suffocating all over. He felt like a kid again, like he couldn’t breathe. Only now there was no Bucky there to hold his hands above his head and wait it out with him.

God, it felt like he was failing. Like he was letting Bucky down somehow. How many times had he been there when Steve needed him? How many times had he saved him when he was being self destructive and stubborn? Steve owed it to him to find him, to help him.

Of course there was also that small voice in the back of his brain reminding him that he had given up Natasha for Bucky. If he didn’t save him, he would have lost them both.

The flat was silent and stuffy. Steve stripped out of his tact gear and left it on the floor, disappearing into the shower. With any luck, Sam would be out for a while longer. Their failure wasn’t having quite the same effect on him; maybe he would go for a drink.

Being on the run had gotten Steve accustomed to cold showers, which he was grateful for, as now they did their part to calm his nerves. He tried to breathe, to relax, but nothing was working. He wasn’t nervous, wasn’t scared, he was pissed off. At himself, at Bucky, at Natasha.

With more force than was necessary, Steve shut off the water and toweled off. He prayed for sleep, knowing it would be a while before it came. With the towel wrapped around his waist and a cloud of emotion trailing behind him, he made his way back to his bedroom.

Sitting on his bed was a small envelope. Steve glanced around, looking for whoever had left it. The front door was still locked, the windows all closed. He checked around the corners, in the closet. No sign of anyone. That left him with a suspicious package and an empty house.

Hesitantly, he picked up the envelope. Something inside of it fell onto the bed, and unless anthrax looked strangely like a blue burner phone, he figured he was in the clear. He inspected it for a moment. It didn’t look like a bomb. When he turned it on, there was one number pre-programmed into it, a number he didn’t recognize, but he had no doubt who it belonged to.

Natasha.

He fell onto the bed, the springs squeaking beneath him in protest. He stared at the green call button. Did he really want to open this can of worms?

It had been months since he had heard from her, and he couldn’t truthfully say that it wasn’t a bit enticing, the idea of calling her up. He missed her like crazy. Anytime he stopped to think about it, to linger on the fact that the last time they had seen each other he had held her for the entire night, that they had gone their separate ways with the word friends burning a hole in both of their stomachs— he felt sick. Right now was one of those times. They had gotten nowhere in their hunt for Bucky; he could use a friend right about now.

However, there was also the reality that Natasha hadn’t come with them because she needed to distance herself from Buck. She needed to spend some time alone and truly sort everything out. If the growing pile of HYDRA bodies Steve and Sam kept coming across meant anything, he would say she was doing a pretty good job. Maybe now wasn’t the time to ring her up, to hear some coy response when he asked her about the guard he had come across in Ibiza with his throat slit. She wanted space, he had to at least respect that, to give her this one thing.

But then, why would she leave the phone?

This is a bad idea.

He tried to listen to himself. It was a bad idea to call up this woman who wasn’t in any emotional state to give him the reassurance he needed. He would probably hang up feeling worse than he already did. He would be left with the sound of her voice in his ear and the memory of her departure, that chaste kiss on his cheek and the way her hips swayed as she walked away.

She had told him to call Sharon.

She had admitted she couldn’t love him.

She had left.

The phone rang exactly six times before it went to voicemail and he briefly thought about hurling it against the wall. Why would she leave it behind if she wasn’t even going to pick up? Was she in danger? Was she alive?

A tap at his window pulled him from his thoughts and he sat up. Perched on the roof, her red hair cut short around her ears, was Natasha.