Friend and Foe
It was a bloody and brutal dance. Steve felt more cracked and beaten than he ever had before. Even speared to a tree in the arena.
He felt every drop of blood as it dripped from every cut. His bones creaked as he dodged and rolled, bruised and cracked from the barrage that is President Schmidt.
Thankfully he was holding his own, pressing back against the force and landing his own blows.
He may have been doing worse than he would since his eyes kept flashing to Bucky.
Blank eyed, brutal expressioned Bucky.
Then the ground rumbled, and the walls began to crack. Both of them paused, momentarily caught off guard.
Then the loud noise tripled and Schmidt took the chance, leaping over the edge of fallen furniture and heading out the door.
It took Steve an extra second to decide. Leave a Schmidt and try to get through to Bucky? Or catch Schmidt?
He paused, his lungs tight at the way Bucky just stood there, completely unphased but the way the building seemed to be falling apart. He shook his head and bounded after Schmidt. He had to take care of that first.
—————
He listened and followed the sound of Schmidt’s footsteps, chasing him down and leaping when he came into view. The force of knocking into him felt like hitting a brick wall, but they both tumbled forward, rolling and slamming into the wall.
But Steve was ready this time. He snapped one of Schmidt’s arms under force, yanking it back and rolling to kneel on the man’s back.
“Get your hands off me!” Schmidt bellowed, “don’t you understand that I am a god? We have left humanity behind and yet you pretend to fight for them!”
“You’re insane.” Steve gritted out, holding him tightly.
“ Steve !”
The voice came from his radio but he couldn’t answer.
“ Steve, the building is collapsing! One of the capitol's planes sent mussels underground—“ there’s crackling and rumbling and Steve heard the building start to protest. “—- get out! It’s a trap!!”
So that’s why Schmidt was running.
Steve leapt up, swiftly kicking Schmidt in the temple. Hard enough to knock him unconscious.
Then he ran, back towards the room he left him standing in. A beam began to crack, and Steve swooped under it just in time, blocking his face from the shards it exploded into.
“Bucky!” He shouted as loud as he could, still half the house away from his friend, “Bucky, please!” He could feel the heat building. Whatever they launched under the presidential estate was bubbling to the surface. He heard the marble floor start to crack and he ran faster.
————
Peggy stood by Howard, listening as he screamed a message to Steve.
But there was no response.
She looked around and felt the tension thicken.
They’d captured the Capitol. All the guards had surrendered and they’d taken control of any military operations on the ground.
But that had been moments before Gabe and Morita had come running from the Tech tent, letting them know about the lone hovercraft heading towards the estate.
“If they kill Steve—“ Gabe said in a tense voice, “that would be a bloody final blow to the rebuilding of the country—“
Peggy tore herself away from the group, running towards the estate, heedless of the calls behind her.
————-
Someone was calling out.
The soldier was already bleeding from being rocked by an explosion and slammed against an ornate decoration. He was sure to receive punishment for that later.
But for now, his biggest concern was that he had been orders to stand guard, and now there was no one to guard.
There’s always someone to guard.
His heart tells him that more than his head. Someone the soldier should be protecting.
A voice shouting made the soldier snap to attention. He listened, wondering which of his tormentors— no… he wasn’t supposed to think like that. Which one of his handlers was coming to collect him.
“Bucky!” A voice shouted. “Can you hear me!” The voice sounded desperate. Worried. Concerned. “Please! ” He heard again, “Bucky, where are you!”
The emotion was so strong that it almost made the soldier move. He almost felt the voice calling him out the door like a magnet.
But his punishment would be—-
The room rocked again and suddenly he felt a beam slam against his skull. Without his permission a pained shout escaped his lips.
“BUCKY!” A voice bellowed through the soldier’s blurry mind. “Bucky, was that you?! It’s me! It’s Steve!”
That name made the soldier’s body react, lurching forward against his will. He crawled towards the door, avoiding the falling structure around him.
Finally into the hallway, he stood, wobbly on his feet with his mind pounding. His fingers touched warmth as he placed it against the top of his skull.
“Bucky!” The soldier turned, seeing the mission standing maybe 25 feet away. Looking terrified. “Bucky, come on, we gotta go.”
He didn’t move. That’s not his name. It’s not him who was being called by this man. His name was soldier.
“Bucky, please!” The man reached out a hand and the soldier felt the inexplicable urge to reach out too. Amusing as they were still a significant distance apart. “Just—“ the man growled in frustration and started towards the soldier, “come on!”
Bucky felt the ground shift again and he looked up, catching the man’s eyes. “Go back.” He said.
The man who had called himself Steve looked at him with a furious expression and took another shaking step forward, “no. Not without you.”
And those words make his head ache as the man leapt over an appearing hole in the ground, only to land a few feet in front of him.
“Come on.” The man ordered, “you’re coming with me—“
The soldier stepped back, feeling fear and dread in equal measure.
“Bucky, come on!” The man shouted, reaching out his hand, almost grasping the soldier's metal arm— “we have to—-“
A final rumble cut his words off, and the soldier watched as the floor gave way and the man who had been so adamant about finding him went falling down into the foundation of the building, only the soldier there to witness his descent.
———
Peggy was rocked to the ground, knees hitting rubble and slicing her pink outfit as the explosion knocked her off her feet.
Her hair whipped with the heat and the wind as she watched the presidential estate start to collapse in on itself.
“No—“ she choked out, “no— STEVE!” She shouted, shoving herself up again and running, avoiding the large chunks of concrete as they littered the grounds. And throwing her hands up to block her head as chunks of debris from the estate started raining down.
Ashes coated her arms and clothes and sparks singed her as they fell but she kept on.
The final boom blew her backwards and the unhinged part of her mind wondered what sort of explosive had so many differing detonation types, while her body slammed against the ground.
————
She regained consciousness and pushed herself up on her elbows. Her jaw ached from how tight she must have been clenching it, and her left ankle felt sprained. But still she stood, gripping rebar and crunched fence as she pushed herself forward.
The glowing smoke and ruins of the estate stood before her and her throat was tight. He couldn’t be dead.
He promised.
He made it out.
He promised.
A hurt part of her wasn’t sure she deserved for him to keep that promise after everything she’d done to him. But Steve didn’t see it that way. She knew that. He had had faith in her when no one else would.
So she had faith in him. That not even the massive destruction in front of her could bring him down.
He would keep his promise.
—————-
The soldier stopped moving at the sound of a gasp.
He turned slowly and saw her.
A face covered in grime and dirt and a garment that was barely pink anymore with how much blood and ash covered it.
But the hair color was unmistakable.
“Barnes.” She said, “is he—“. Her eyes trailed to the object in his hands.
The strap of a uniform, attached the blonde man.
The soldier hadn’t been able to leave him. He’d watched as the blonde man had fallen, sad eyes meeting the soldier’s as he disappeared into the darkness below.
And the soldier found himself scrambling and sliding down into the earth, using only his senses and incredible hearing to locate the barely audible breathing of the only other human around.
Crushed between cracks in the foundation, and bleeding out of so many wounds that he was more blood than man, he looked like death. But the soldier wouldn’t allow that thought to continue. He’d seen this man’s resilience. If he could survive being shot by the soldier, then he could survive anything.
Bloodying his flesh fingers, and scraping his metal ones, he dragged the man up and onto his shoulders. When the blonde man made a sound of distress, the soldier had gently patted the man’s head. An instinct so strong he didn’t know how to deny it.
Then he’d crawled, dragged, walked, and leapt his way out of the ruins. Until fresh air (or at least more fresh than inside) filled his nostrils. He’d been only 30 feet from the building when the woman had found him.
“Is Steve okay?” She asked, gesturing to the man now bleeding on the ground. “Barnes, are you okay?”
“The soldier is functional.” He said, wincing at the scrape of his throat.
Her eyes briefly closed and she took a deep breath. “You’re not the soldier. You’re James Buchanan Barnes, and you’ve been taken. Just like I was—“
He didn’t deny this. He remembered hearing her screams. Her shouts. Her cries of anguish and pain. Right alongside his.
“I fought my way back, and you can too—“ her eyes kept glancing down to the blonde man. He was her priority, he could sense that as easily as he could sense the pull of gravity.
The blonde man was her gravity.
He looked down. The man was breathing. He could hear that, but it sounded labored. Probably a pierced lung. Painful, and unpleasant. But not lethal.
“Barnes.” The woman began again, “James—“ when the soldier felt no pull to those names he heard her clear her throat, “Bucky—“
And at this the soldier felt surprise, and looked up, she smiled, “yes, we know each other. Even if you don’t remember. You saved him from the explosion, didn’t you?”
The soldier couldn’t say anything. Saving the mission was against his instructions.
“Help me save him now.” She whispered, “I can’t carry him by myself. I need your help. Please.”
“Not mission parameters.”
“Schmidt is dead!” She snapped at him, “and so is Zola!” The soldier winced at the second name. “So their orders mean nothing anymore. What matters is that Steve, and you, are safe. Please, help me carry him, please. And we will tend to your wounds, and I promise Howard can help you.” She stepped forward and he stepped back. Ready to bolt. So she stopped. And then slowly started to walk forward again, and her motions were so slow and gentle that he did not run away. Her fingers reached out and brushed back his long hair, a touch so affectionate that the soldier almost couldn’t name it, having been deprived of physical affection for so long. “He missed you more than you can imagine. Don’t leave him now. Don’t make him face this new frontier alone.” Her voice cracked and she screwed up her face in an attempt to hide the tears, “he’s going to face so many hardships, and I’m not—“ she glared at the ground, “I hurt him. I need someone to protect him from me, and that’s you. And you’ll need someone to protect him from yourself, and that’s me—“ she stomped her foot, “he’s too damn stubborn for his own good to leave either of us and so he needs us to keep each other in check!” And the soldier’s mind warred with something. A broken consciousness waking and writhing and fighting to remember. It scared him. So he took another step back. Leaving a gap between him and the man on the ground. The space was painful but he kept himself there. Her face turned dark. “What if you leave and I hurt him?” She asked, her tone sharp, “do you know that I almost managed to kill him twice?! ” The soldier does not like that.
Even though his mission was the same.
“He needs you, Barnes. If you go he’ll never stop searching. Never. He’ll run himself ragged, do you understand? He’ll forgo all else to make sure you’re safe and back home. Your parents are waiting for you. Rebecca—“ That name gives him the same feeling that the name Steve did, “— is waiting for you too.” She crouches down, brushing bloody blonde hair from the man’s brow, “he promised them he’d bring you back. You’re going to make him break a promise to the only family he has left?”
The soldier didn’t understand that she was laying it on thick. He couldn’t comprehend that she was utilizing every guilt and emotional ammunition in her arsenal to break through the brainwashing they’d forced upon him.
He only knew his heart clenched at every sentence, that he wanted to ensure that whatever she was saying wouldn’t come true.
The fighting in his brain increased, causing him to flinch and suck in a sharp intake of breath.
The woman nodded, “that’s it Barnes, fight your way back. Come help me.” She grabbed at her garment and pulled up a small section to wipe at the blonde man’s face. “Here I am, darling.” She whispered, “you’re going to be alright,” her voice went hoarse as she took in his bleeding and broken form, “we’ll get you all fixed up.” She raised her red rimmed eyes, “well? What will it be? Are you helping me? Or am I dragging him all the way to medical attention myself?” When he didn’t respond, she huffed and stood, “James Buchanan Barnes you will help me carry him back to base, and you will be there when he wakes up. Is that understood!?”
And the command in her tone left no argument.
He stepped forward, crouching and rolling his flesh arm under the man’s neck and the metal arm under his legs. Lifting him with a grunt, his head pounding, “lighter.” He gasped out as he staggered under the man’s weight.
The woman looked at him sharply, “what was that?”
“He used to be lighter.” The soldier spoke the words unbidden. But the woman lit up.
“Yes, indeed he did.” She said, beaming at him.
And together they walked, shakily and stumbling over rubble, but together, back towards the base. Her hand resting on the man’s boot while the soldier carried him.
—————