Chapter 4
Steve’s prediction, made in frustration as he’d stared at his blank television screen, had turned out to be correct. There was always another HYDRA base to find destroyed and abandoned. There was always another tape.
By now Steve had seen Bucky returning to HYDRA after an unsatisfactory mission and being forced into a painfully contorted position, ordered to hold it as punishment even as hours passed and his muscles shook and his head began to loll with exhaustion. He’d seen Bucky training to hone his combat skills, stripped shirtless with his scarred back exposed as he fought hand-to-hand against an endless stream of HYDRA agents until his arm was bloodied up and down from blocking knife jabs and he could barely stand to face his next opponent. He’d seen Bucky cuffed to the ominous black Chair Steve had read about in his files, body taut with electricity and seizing against the restraints as he screamed through his mouthguard. He’d seen the exact moment of panic just before the life flashed out of Bucky’s eyes when he was strapped down and sealed away in the cryo chamber.
Steve had a whole collection of tapes now, stacked in neat chronological order in a shoebox and shoved onto his bookshelf for safekeeping. It should have felt like penance, dutifully watching each one and then storing it away in the macabre collection, but instead each tape he added to the box just served to make him feel heavier.
“I’m sorry,” he tried saying into his empty apartment, as though Bucky might be listening. As though he might just materialize out of the shadows and relieve Steve of having to play this awful game. But the walls of his apartment didn’t reply.
It was early evening when Steve, home and freshly showered after another futile mission to investigate a base in nearby Virginia, pulled the shoebox from its place on the shelf and removed the newest addition. With the last of the day’s sunlight slanting in through his window, a taunting contrast to the task in front of him, Steve fiddled with the label on the tape, reluctant to go through with the inevitable viewing. The words Asset: Behavioral Instability Documentation (2008) were dark with how recently they’d been inked.
Steve forced himself forward to put the tape in the player, but allowed himself a moment before starting the video to let his eyes slip closed. Lately, he’d been feeling the buildup of every ounce of the past months’ exhaustion. He could feel it in the droop of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. It took more strength than he felt he had left to keep going, but he knew he'd feel even worse if he let himself stop. He forced his back to straighten, his eyes to open, before reaching forward and pressing play.
He was immediately jarred by the scene that confronted him, mostly because it was all so familiar. The camera had been set up in a dimly lit laboratory facing the Chair, which Steve imagined he’d never be able to look at without feeling sick, but the ambient chatter drifting between lab techs working around it was in English now. A scientist walked past the camera and Steve caught sight of a SHIELD logo stamped on the bottom of her clipboard.
When the frame cleared, Steve’s eyes zeroed in on the figure sitting crumpled in the Chair. Bucky was slumped over with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, hair damp with sweat and hanging over his face. He’d been stripped of his tac vest, but his pants and boots were still on like he’d just returned from a mission. An IV drip was slowly and steadily delivering a mystery substance through a needle buried beneath the skin of his forearm.
The longer Steve watched, the more he noticed that the scientists were giving Bucky an especially wide berth. Bucky hardly looked like a threat, shaking minutely where he sat bent almost double, but something about him was still driving even the people who tortured him for a living to keep their distance.
Before Steve could figure out what it was, the booming sound of an opening door echoed from across the room and the soft chatter between the lab techs stopped. Everyone fell still and silent as a man in a smart business suit, his posture exuding authority and self-assurance, walked into frame.
Steve felt his whole body tensing with fury. He knew there was nothing he could do about it now, but the sight of Alexander Pierce still brought out a surge of the sort of vicious anger he'd spent his whole life wrestling into check. He wasn’t proud of it, but he was pretty sure he would have done anything in his power to ensure Pierce had suffered more before he died.
“Asset.”
Pierce’s cold voice seemed to capture the attention of everyone in the room but Bucky. When Bucky ignored him, head still hanging between his hands, Pierce stepped closer, dress shoes clicking against the sterile floor of the lab.
“Asset. Mission report.”
A stretch of uncomfortable silence passed, during which Steve swore he could hear the ragged sound of Bucky breathing, before Pierce lost his patience. His hand darted out to brand a harsh smack across Bucky’s buried face.
“Asset.”
“Sir,” one of the lab techs piped up, voice soft like he was afraid to redirect Pierce’s rage away from Bucky, the readily available target. “You might — you might want to be careful. He’s unstable. Behaving erratically. Violently. We keep upping the antipsychotics, but he’s been wiped so many times now it’s… hard to keep up…”
The tech trailed off when Bucky started moving. He slowly raised his head, dragging it up from where it had been resting on his hands so he could look Pierce in the eye. Bucky’s hair fell away from his face, and Steve sucked in a sharp breath. Where Bucky’s hands had been, streaks of blood were now painted across his face. Red smeared his cheeks like tears someone had tried to wipe away. Bucky’s hands were still stained with it, a bright-red tacky film covering them up until the point where the sleeves on his tactical vest would have cut off.
Pierce tutted in disappointment. Ignoring the lab techs entirely, he took another confident step towards Bucky. “Look at you.” Pierce crouched so he was closer Bucky's eye level. “I know the mission was a success. Your handlers told me. But I need the details. I want to know how you still managed to make such a mess of things.”
Pierce reached out a finger and prodded one of Bucky’s bloodied hands, now curled limply in his lap, to demonstrate his point. A slow expression of confusion made its way across Bucky’s face at the brief contact. He looked down at his lap, then blinked up at Pierce again. The furrow between his eyebrows didn’t fade, just grew more tense with a twisted expression that seemed to indicate pain. His eyes were glazed, pupils blown wide and dark, as he stared blankly into Pierce’s face.
“What the hell is wrong with him?” In his frustration, Pierce didn’t give the techs a chance to respond. “Asset. Now. You’d better start talking.”
Bucky opened his mouth, then closed it. Blinking slowly, confusion and pain still warring across his face, he opened his mouth again and mumbled, “I… I don’t wanna do this anymore.”
All traces of action in the room stilled. Lab techs froze in place and looked nervously to Pierce, who was staring at Bucky in fury, lost for words.
Pierce’s hand twitched like he wanted to wind up and backhand Bucky again, but he managed to keep himself in check. Clenching that hand into a fist to stop the motion, Pierce slowly turned away from Bucky and fixed the lab staff with the same withering stare.
“What did you do?” he asked, each word clipped and lethal. “His work is integral to HYDRA’s success over the coming years. We cannot afford to lose an asset this valuable. What did you do? Why is he behaving like this?”
“I-it’s like we’ve been saying, sir,” one of the scientists finally spoke up. “He’s damaged. With the increase in missions he’s been performing lately, we’ve had to wipe him more and more often. That, plus the chemical conditioning regimen… we’re at a breaking point, here. We’ve just about reached the maximum amount of regenerative medication we can give him while also keeping him stimulated in the field and subdued in the lab. Someone with his enhancements can withstand a lot, but he’s not indestructible. If you want his brain to heal, you might need to consider… retiring him? Just for a little while, at least?”
Pierce said nothing to the scientist’s hurried explanation, just stared him down until the man wilted under his gaze. Pierce’s eyes then drifted back to Bucky, still sitting hunched at the edge of the Chair. He’d left his hands curled in his lap, but over the course of Pierce’s argument his head had slowly sunk until it was hanging down, chin to chest.
Without warning, Pierce lunged forward and grabbed Bucky by the face. Bucky made a surprised noise in the back of his throat as his head was suddenly wrenched upwards, glassy eyes watering as he blinked into the harsh fluorescent lights and Pierce’s furious face.
“Asset.” Steve could still hear the ice in Pierce’s voice, but his face had gone condoling, an unsettlingly sympathetic smile masking the frost in his tone. Bucky blinked at him helplessly. “I don’t believe what they’re saying for a second. I know you’re not as broken as they’re making you out to be. Why don’t you give me a status report?”
Bucky’s confusion gave way to determination in the face of a clear order. Pierce released his bruising grip on Bucky’s jaw and watched as he worked to formulate his thoughts. Bucky blinked away the water that had collected on his eyelashes and took a deep, shaky breath.
“Status… minimal surface damage sustained during mission performance. Not of concern. All mechanical systems in the arm remain functional. Not of concern. But…” Bucky swallowed hard. Steve could see his pulse jumping in his throat. “Experiencing… dizziness. Blurred vision. Unexplained head pain, status: e-extremely severe.”
Steve shut his eyes, pulled in a steadying breath. He was hit with a vivid wave of memories from their life before, when all too often illness or dehydration or simple iron deficiency would leave him debilitated, laid up in bed with unbearable migraines. He remembered the worst of those headaches feeling like the end of the world. He also remembered Bucky’s soft presence beside him, gentle fingers rubbing tension from his shoulders when he could bear to be touched, bringing him water and warmth and breathing quiet reassurances until the worst of the pain passed.
Steve opened his eyes to see Bucky swaying slightly in the Chair, eyes increasingly puffy and bloodshot, squinting as he tried to put thoughts together around the heavy, pulsing roadblock of pain in his head. Steve would have done anything to return the favor. Just to hold him.
Pierce was frowning at Bucky, unimpressed. “Asset. Are you functional?”
Bucky pressed his lips together, like he wanted to argue but couldn’t, the correct answer having been beaten into him long ago. “...yes, sir. Functional.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.” Pierce turned back to the lab techs, arms extended in a triumphant gesture. “I want you to proceed with maintenance as usu—”
“I just wanted to help them,” Bucky mumbled, so quiet that Steve almost didn’t hear.
“What was that?” Pierce’s attention was back on Bucky, that cold, predatory look returning to his eyes.
“They were scared. Hurt. Too young, they — the targets. They didn’t deserve it. What I did.” Bucky’s hands twisted in his lap as he spoke, and Steve watched his metal fingers scratch at his right palm, flakes of dried blood peeling off and fluttering down to rest on the black leather of the Chair. “I wanted to help them. I-I tried to. Tried to save them. But it didn't… they didn’t…”
Bucky’s eyes were lost in an awful thousand-yard stare, unfocused in the middle distance as he kept absently wringing his hands, disturbing the blood residue that Steve now knew was a remnant of him trying to save whoever he’d been sent to kill. Too deeply immersed in the memory. Bucky didn’t seem to realize he’d said anything wrong.
Pierce was taking slow, measured breaths, but Steve could see a vein popping out at his temple, eyes bulging with barely contained fury. “I don’t — we don’t have time for reconditioning punishments. Just — just wipe him. Start over.”
“But, sir — his programming is breaking down because he’s experiencing the effects of repeated brain injury. Wiping him now will only worsen the problem —”
“Does it look like I fucking care?” Pierce’s fragile composure finally shattered. He lashed out at the nearest object, a cart containing what Steve knew from a previous tape to be tools used for the agonizing process of digging inside of and “fixing” Bucky’s metal arm. The tools fell to the ground along with the cart that had held them, making an ungodly loud metallic clatter that had even Steve flinching away from his television speakers.
Bucky, so much closer to the sound and already struggling through a nightmarish headache, jolted with a shudder that ran through his whole body. Steve watched his face blanch a ghostly pale, watched his bloody hands come up to clutch at his hair, winding through it and tugging at it like the motion would somehow relieve the booming pressure in his skull. As the sound of metal hitting the floor faded away, Steve caught the very end of a strangled cry of distress being pulled from his mouth.
Pierce stood over the scattered tools, shoulders heaving as he tried to rein himself back in. He raised a hand to wipe sweat from his brow, fixing hair that had grown disheveled in his outburst.
“Just fix him,” he snapped, red-faced. “Now.”
The lab techs, looking at the scattered medical instruments with wide-eyed fear, evidently felt it was in their best interests to stop arguing. They rushed around, booting up the computers connected to the Chair, yanking Bucky’s hands away from his head to remove the IV drip. Bucky’s face twisted into a grimace as his head lost the support of his hands. It sagged towards his chest, defeated. He was crying in earnest now, silent tears cutting tracks through the blood on his face.
A pair of scientists laid their hands on Bucky’s chest, trembling and soaked with clammy sweat, and began shoving him to lean back in the chair where the halo waited, hovering over his head. Bucky blinked, seeming to realize for the first time what was about to happen.
“No” he grunted, writhing as much as he could against the scientists’ grip without moving his aching head too much. “No, I don’t — I don’t want to do this —”
“Asset.” Pierce’s voice stopped Bucky in his tracks, his metal fist half-raised to deal a blow to one of the attending scientists. Bucky’s bloodshot eyes flicked to Pierce, hesitant but trusting in a way that made Steve’s stomach clench with something uncomfortably like jealousy.
“You’re malfunctioning,” Pierce was saying, “but we can fix it. Don’t you want that? Want us to make this all go away?”
Bucky’s shoulders sagged. His fist was still raised, but there was no real intent behind the motion anymore. His pleading eyes were still glued to Pierce’s face, roving across it like he was trying to read it, trying to figure out how to answer that question of wanting without understanding what it meant.
“It hurts,” Bucky mumbled.
“I'm aware,” Pierce said, feigning patience. “And I’m asking if you’re going to cooperate while we fix it.”
Slowly, like it took every ounce of willpower in his body, Bucky tipped his aching head into a nod.
“Good,” Pierce said, lips curling into a sharp smile. “That’s good. They can fix you. But only if you sit back and let them work.”
“No —” There was no heat behind the protest. Bucky’s eyes squeezed shut like he knew he’d fallen into a trap but was just too tired to fight his way out of it again.
The scientists on screen doubled their efforts to get Bucky leaned back in the chair, and there was a sudden banging at Steve’s front door.
“...Steve?” a voice called, but it felt very far away. Steve was still transfixed by the look on Bucky’s face, so destroyed — nothing like Bucky from before the war, or even the Winter Soldier. On a face Steve knew so well, the sheer newness of that expression scared him.
No longer fighting under Pierce’s watchful eye, Bucky was quickly overpowered and subdued. The metal restraints snapped closed over his arms. As a bite guard was shoved into his mouth, the banging at Steve’s door returned, louder this time.
“Steve.” It was Sam, Steve realized distantly.
“Coming,” Steve called, but it was quiet, or maybe Steve wasn’t hearing himself, only hearing Bucky’s breath as it picked up speed, his chest heaving with fear of what he knew was about to happen.
The electrified halo was lowering towards Bucky’s head, and Steve was so angry and heartbroken and scared, and Sam’s voice in the hallway was saying “Steve, come on, man. I know you’re home. Is everything okay?”
The Chair’s metal plates were almost at Bucky’s temples, and Steve realized what was about to happen a moment before it actually did, Bucky’s throat tensing around a scream as the first sparks of electricity met his head. Steve lunged for the remote, fumbling desperately for the power button. He managed to switch the television off just as the first strangled yell tore its way up Bucky’s throat.
“What the — okay. Something’s wrong. I’m coming in.”
For Sam, hearing that short, cut-off scream had been enough. Steve’s front door rattled with the force of a body being thrown against it. One more blow and the lock gave in, the door swinging in and bouncing sharply off the wall behind it. Steve whipped his head around and saw Sam, gun raised, aiming in at Steve’s apartment in clear anticipation of a threat.
“Whoa, whoa — Sam, it’s just me —”
“Jesus, Steve. ” Sam lowered the gun and stepped inside, but his eyes were still darting around Steve’s apartment, looking for a hostile in the shadows. “You can’t just leave me hanging like that. Thought something had happened to you. Wouldn’t be the first time HYDRA broke into your apartment. I swear I heard screaming, and… what the hell?”
Sam trailed off, and Steve followed his gaze to the coffee table in his living room. The coffee table where a shoebox sat, an assortment of videotapes scattered around it with their labels in full view.
Sam took a hesitant step closer to get a better look, and Steve stood frozen in the middle of his living room, caught out as Sam read over the visible labels. He looked to Steve in disbelief, and Steve couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything to explain when his throat was about to close up with all his grief and guilt and shame.
Sam opened his mouth. Then, reading Steve’s stricken face the way he’d always been able to, shut it again.
“We’ll talk about this,” he said. “Later. But this is urgent. I wouldn’t ask, if it weren’t, but — do you think you can handle suiting up right now?”
Numb, detached from his body, Steve barely managed to nod.
“I was checking out the utility usage of all of our local spots of interest, and one of them just triggered a huge surge of electrical activity. It’s just a warehouse, out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s been on our list of potential HYDRA hideouts for a while — and it’s close enough to drive. I think we should head down there now, see if we can catch anything.”
Steve felt his heart surging to life in his chest again. He could never undo that wide-eyed look Sam had given him—the one he was still giving him, eyes darting toward the tapes every so often like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing—but this was something he’d always been good at. Tangible action, a battle plan to keep his mind in order.
The potentiality of finding some warm-bodied HYDRA agents and making them pay for every ounce of the torture Bucky had suffered.
“Alright,” Steve said. His voice only wavered a litte. “I’m ready now. Let’s go.”
They sped out of the city, lights fading in their rearview mirror and giving way to rural darkness. Silence hung uncomfortably between them during the drive, but as they neared the coordinates of the warehouse something shifted. They turned down a long, winding dirt road and started to smell something strange, the pungent scent of gasoline mixed with a hint of smoke. It wasn’t a smell that belonged out in the countryside, in the woods.
The smell got stronger as they reached the warehouse’s supposed coordinates, but that was the only indication they’d found anything at all. The directions had led them, not to any visible structure, but to a thick growth of trees looming at the end of the long dirt road.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Sam said. “I swear, this is the exact spot…”
A sense of dread was creeping over Steve. It was dark, late at night now, and they were alone out here in the middle of nowhere. This could very well have been a trap, one they’d willingly rushed into.
But there was still a chance that this was a real lead, and Steve owed it to Bucky to take every chance he got.
“Let’s check it out,” he said, nodding toward the trees. “Stay close, stay alert, but… we’ve got to follow this through. Just in case.”
Sam pulled the car to the side of the road where it was at least half-hidden in the grass. With flashlights out and aimed into the woods, Sam and Steve began tearing their way through the brush.
The growth of trees wasn’t nearly as thick as it had appeared from the road. Sam and Steve quickly broke through the treeline and into a clearing, well-hidden from anyone that happened to pass by on the road. Steve swung his flashlight beam around the clearing and saw that it had once held a structure. That structure was now little more than a pile of rubble, chunks of wood and concrete piled on top of each other, emanating faint dust and the rancid chemical fumes.
“No,” Steve whispered numbly, half in disbelief. They were too late, again, and now the whole building was gone along with any evidence he might have found within it.
“Come on. We've gotta look around,” he said a little louder, starting towards the pile of rubble.
“Steve, no. We’re too late —”
“No. We can’t be. We can’t be.” Steve felt his voice cracking. He couldn’t turn to face Sam, still waiting at the edge of the trees. “I can’t have lost him again. I can’t do it.”
Sam sighed. Steve heard his footsteps brushing through the grass. He’d expected Sam to come up alongside him, but instead he kept walking, heading for the ruined structure. He aimed his flashlight between the chunks of concrete. Taking it as the gesture of support it was, Steve moved forward to start combing through the debris.
Between the strong smell and the thick dust hanging in the air, Steve was convinced the building had gone down recently, probably as a result of the electrical surge Sam had noticed. It seemed unlikely anyone inside would have survived the collapse, but Steve would be damned if he let a single HYDRA operative slip through his fingers.
“Hello?” he called, moving to the far side of the former structure, where the light from Sam’s flashlight hadn’t yet reached. “Anyone in there?”
He’d expected silence. What he got in response instead was a whispered groan, too quiet for anyone without his sharp hearing to have picked up. Breath catching in his throat, Steve moved toward the sound. “Hello?”
It had come from somewhere deeply buried inside the wreck. Steve tossed his flashlight aside and began shifting away chunks of the ruined building so that he could move closer.
“I’m coming in,” he said. “Any HYDRA operatives left in this building should identify themsel—”
Steve stopped. He’d tossed aside a knot of concrete and rebar and seen a foot poking out of the rubble. A combat boot tucked into bloodied jeans.
He shifted aside another heavy piece to free the leg, followed it with his eyes up to where a body was propped in a half-seated position, chest pinned beneath another concrete fragment, head free and tilted back against the low remains of a wall. Through the darkness, a pair of eyes blinked sluggishly up at Steve.
He didn’t need the light to know exactly what shade of blue they were.
“Bucky.”