Chapter 1
When Sam finds the bodies, he’s almost certain he’ll chastise Bucky for being so reckless and violent. Being Captain America means a lot of things- most of all, being directly in the public eye. While Bucky’s not the one holding the shield, he is Sam’s partner, which dumps the ramifications from missions gone bad onto both of them. There’s never a stone unturned by the media, and especially as a black man, he’s under intense scrutiny from almost everyone for every minute action he may or may not take. It’s a ‘smile, you're being watched’ kind of situation, which generally is a good motto. Just not when it stems from his race over his authority.
Yet here Sam finds himself, in a hallway coated with crimson. It’s… not a good look, to say the least. Which makes Sam glad he came in alone. Sometimes, violence is a necessity; that’s just a part of the job. A dislikable one, sure- Sam would rather talk things out then needlessly stain his hands, for the sake of both sides- but there always comes a point where necessity outrides comfort.
Which apparently seems to be the case here, for some reason or another. Doesn’t mean he’s not upset about it. Doesn’t mean he’s not… disturbed- to put it lightly- by the bodies littering the cement floor. Knowing it’s been done by Bucky’s hands.
One man is pinned to the ground with some sort of pipe, blood slick along the metal and barely visible in the darkened hallway. Another is slumped against the left wall, head hanging in a way that barely conceals the subtle dent in his skull. Another, yet, has been stabbed through the eye. And Sam can tell, because the knife is still there, embedded into the pale skin of the guy’s face. Behind it, a blackened hole glistening with viscera.
It seems like overkill. It seems… unlike Bucky. Bordering on the edge of Winter Soldier, based solely on the sheer amount of carnage left in the perpetrator’s wake. But that knife is one Sam recognizes, sleek black matte handle and glimmering blade, one that’s been sharpened time and time again.
Looking back on it, he’ll recognize the fact that the sloppiness of the scene points to passion over efficiency, a need for revenge over a drive to complete the mission. Bucky may have employed the skillset of the Winter Soldier, but the mindset is still locked away, buried deep in a way that only comes through memories.
Sam doesn’t put those pieces together immediately, of course, because his sole focus is on the mission: rescuing Bucky and taking the captors- HYDRA, judging by the red logo plastered on the uniforms of the bodies strewn about- into custody. Though it seems Bucky already has beat him on both fronts.
“Torres, prepare a medevac for these assholes.” Sam says into his comm, though he’s fairly certain the HYDRA goons are far beyond help at this point. It’s more for the sake of not leaving a trail of corpses in this secluded base, and also in the off chance that there are any survivors who recover, they can later be interrogated.
“Roger that, Cap.” Torres replies, voice serious yet boyish in a not-quite naive way, but still encapsulating a rare innocence for his rank. Sam is just grateful for the fact that he didn’t have Torres running infiltration with him on this op, and instead is on standby as outside reinforcement. The sight is a bit… gruesome, even for Sam. Not the worst he’s seen- Afghanistan was a bitch and a half, especially as pararescue- but still a tad macabre for his taste.
So, Sam steadies himself, eyeing the slightly ajar metal door at the end of the hallway, and takes a breath. Steps over the arm of the soldier slumped against the wall, pauses, and leans down to rip the knife from the eye of the other goon- if only to prove a point to Bucky. The body twitches slightly as it emits a wet squelch. If any of these HYDRA agents have a chance of survival, it’s certainly not this guy. Not that Sam can complain, since they are literal Nazis, but the whole situation is just kind of unsettling.
Warning sign number one: Bucky aims to disarm, not to maim, injure, or kill. At this point, Sam is worried that he might have to act as a clean up crew to another group of hostiles. It puts his nerves on edge, thinking about the possibility of another party, so he’s understandably a bit pissed off when he takes a step back, and bursts through the door, gun drawn. Only to be greeted by the sight of Bucky. Who’s just standing there, off to the side, eyes unfocused and faced towards the right wall of the room.
“What the hell, man?” Sam asks without thinking, a sort of shouted whisper, “What’s going on?”
Because on a normal mission, Bucky would just joke and brag about the fact that he took down more goons than Sam. But they would be handcuffed, not brutally injured and lifelessly covering the floor of the hall. Not silent- too silent- unable to spew whatever bullshit motto their group has decided on. There’s no ‘Hail HYRDAs’ or promises of two heads in place of one. It’s quiet.
Sam realises- perhaps a bit too late- that he’s just seeing Bucky. There’s no ambush, no secret ploy to gain the upperhand. No clandestine agents beyond the walls, guns trained on their chests with red laser dots. No, he’s just seeing Bucky.
Sam’s just seeing Bucky- for the first time in three days.
A lot can happen in three days.
And because he’s confused and agitated and more than a little on edge, Sam pulls out Bucky’s knife from his waistband and holds it up so it’s lit by the exposed bulb on the ceiling (which, a bit of a cliché touture dungeon trope, but damn if it doesn’t do the job). “What happened?”
His voice is hard and a tad accusatory, which Sam regrets almost immediately, but Bucky doesn’t even react. Just… keeps blearily staring off to the side.
And that’s when Sam takes the time to look at him. Really look at him. Which he should’ve done in the beginning. Because- well.
Bucky’s pressed up against the far wall, flesh hand pushing so hard against the cement that his fingertips are all but white. Blood is splattered along his cheek (though whether it’s his own or the HYDRA agents’, Sam can’t tell; probably a mixture of both.) His vibranium arm hangs limply at his side, awkwardly, like a dead weight. His eyes are bloodshot and unseeing. There’s a deep gash on his forehead that’s sluggishly bleeding, rivulets of crimson drops dribbling down the side of his face and off his chin.
“What’s going on?” Sam repeats, but softer this time. Still too soon. Because his eyes trail further down, a full body inspection, and-
What?
He can’t quite put the pieces together. Maybe doesn’t want to. All he sees is the awkward way Bucky’s pants lay around his waist, unbuttoned and unzippered, lacking the leather belt he usually dons. The jeans are bloodstained and sordid- way too much so for it to have conceivably happened in only three days.
“Bucky?” Sam asks, and steps closer tentatively. Puts his hand out, kind of like a tamer approaching a wild animal, weak and timid, bolting at the slightest sound. It’s strange to see Bucky compare to that so easily, since the man himself is usually quite the opposite. The predator. The one you want to avoid. (On missions, of course, Sam wouldn’t consider letting Bucky near AJ and Cass if he was constantly a brooding hunk of metal.)
He doesn’t respond. Sam steps closer. Says his name again. “Bucky?”
Stormy blue eyes are clouded, staring off to nothing. No recognition. Sam sheaths Bucky’s knife in his own belt, wiping the blood off on his pants, and inches forward even more.
“Bucky.”
The inability to cause any reaction is really… kind of frightening. Bucky’s the guy who can hear a man from a mile away and shoot him straight through the head at double that distance. He’s not the guy to zone out like this, especially in an enemy base. Especially in a HYDRA base.
Although, what does Sam know? It’s not like he was around for the seventy some odd years Bucky was imprisoned and tortured at a place like this. Maybe dissociation is a must have whenever infiltrating your old brainwashing buddies’ base.
It seems… odd... though. Off. Something is wrong.
(Because the zipper is down, and-)
By all accounts, Sam knows it’s a bad idea when he leans forward, fingertips ghosting over pallid skin. Knows it’s a bad idea when he feels the first glimmer of contact. But hell, he’s confused and on edge and doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.
Doesn’t mean he feels any less awful when Bucky lets out a full body flinch at the touch, a shiver shooting straight through his chest. At the very least, it does cause some reaction; Bucky’s eyes blink a few times before hazily focusing their attention on Sam.
Bucky’s lips move in an imitation of sound, no words coming out. He’s wide-eyed, focused in that adrenaline fueled way, even though the base itself is quiet.
“Hey, it’s O-K.” Sam says quietly, awkwardly trying to console Bucky without actually touching him again. “You gotta tell me what’s happening, man.”
And something happens then. A shift. A change. All within the blink of an eye. Literally. Bucky blinks, clenching his eyes tightly for a second, then opens them. They’re steely, and determined, and so, so unlike the dilated baby blues Sam saw earlier that he’s not entirely convinced this whole mission hasn’t been a fever dream from the start. Because people don’t just do that- they don’t just blink away their emotions with a bat of an eye.
Bucky doesn’t even give Sam time to breathe before he answers, which is so utterly disorienting Sam has to cut him off.
“Standard HYDRA base. Attempt at reorganization. Everyone has been-”
“Bucky, what?” In response, all he receives is a stare, like he’s the crazy one. “What- I mean, you’re good?”
It’s more of a rhetorical question, since Sam clearly knows Bucky isn’t good, but it’s disputed all the same.
Bucky nods tightly before continuing. “This branch was trying to re-”
Sam holds up his hands again, in a stopping gesture. “Whoa, whoa. Slow down, man. You gotta catch me up, here. I feel like I’m missing something.” He trails his eyes over Bucky once more, finding that the scene he imagined is very much still real and not a hallucination. “What happened to you?”
He’s not expecting to get a clear cut response- Bucky’s already shown he wants to move past whatever this is- but it still catches him off guard when Bucky moves to push past him, beelining out of the room without another word. Sam trails after him, almost comically.
“Are you injured?”
No stop, no hesitation- Bucky doesn’t even look back as he makes his way back out to the hallway Sam just came in from. As the bodies come into view once again, Sam asks the other question weighing heavily on his mind. “Did you kill them?”
Again, Bucky doesn’t respond, but he does pointedly avoid looking down at the carnage by his feet, the fresh corpses littering his wake. And that- if not the bloodied and besmirched knife resting in Sam’s belt- is answer enough.
They continue walking, going back out the way Sam had come in, till Bucky takes a sharp right into a darkened hallway. Stumbles a bit. Leans against the wall for a moment, vibranium clinking against the metallic tiling of the hall.
Sam’s learned his lesson about asking questions he surely won’t get an answer to, but damn if Bucky looks like shit right now. And he doesn’t even know why. Another ‘What? What’s going on?’ burns on the tip of his tongue, but he squashes it down, for the moment being. If it were really that important, if it were really necessary for the mission, Bucky would tell him. He would. They trust each other enough for that.
…
(Would he?)
Eventually, they reach a large side door, with a small electronic panel at the side that Bucky presses two fingers against. It lights up green with a ding, encasing Bucky’s already pale face in a sickly hue, and the door slides open quickly, letting a stream of light flood out into the hallway.
There’s a harsh, breathy sound that slowly filters in through Sam’s ears. Not quite a whooshing of air, but more of an arrhythmic gasping, heavy and stuttering. It takes him a few seconds to pinpoint where the noise is emanating from, and it does no favors to his sanity once he realizes it’s coming from Bucky.
The man himself is resting- if you could call it that- leaned against the door frame. Blood continues trickling down his face, eyes fluttering on the edge of unconscious delirium, but still endowed with whatever perverted focus Bucky’s forced himself to maintain. Sam has to remind himself that head wounds always look worse than they actually are- always bleed more- but that doesn’t exactly assuage his concern because that must mean something else is causing the obvious pain that Bucky is in.
Sam once again runs his eyes over Bucky’s form, since said man seems content with pausing here for a second. Taking a second to rest. In the middle of a HYDRA base. Not that Sam believes there’s actually any threat still present to contend with; Bucky’s certainly taken care of everything on that front. But it’s out of character. Usually ex-captees don’t like to meander about the bases of their torturers. (Although, again, what does Sam know? It’s not exactly like Bucky wears his emotions on his sleeve.)
The dirty white tank top Bucky’s in leaves little to the imagination- that is to say, if there were any serious injuries on his upper body, Sam would be able to spot them. There’s a few scrapes here and there, a knife wound on his right shoulder that would probably need stitches if it were on an unenhanced person, but other than that… Nada. Zilch. Nothing. There’s no notable injuries, especially any that would cause Bucky to be on the precipice of passing out like he is.
Really, the only strange thing is the positioning of the metal arm, limp and awkward at Bucky’s side. Almost- laughably, Sam thinks- like it’s been powered down. Shut off. And then, more soberly, he wonders who has the technology to even do that. To either cause enough damage to break a piece of vibranium tech designed by Wakanda, or more scarily, to be able to hack into the arm and simply disable it from functioning.
Sam limits his eyes from treading downwards. Knows what he’ll find. Decides to not think about that right now. Maybe that’s selfish. But if Bucky’s not saying anything, like hell is he going to.
“Data.” Bucky wheezes out, averting his eyes towards the bright light of the opened room.
Eloquently, Sam responds. “What?”
“HYDRA. Data.” A man of few words. Though, in fairness, it does look like Bucky’s having trouble even spitting out those few fragments.
He moves to make his way into the room, swaying precariously as he shifts from where he was leaning. Sam reaches out to catch him should he fall, but again, Bucky rights himself and brushes past, dead set on reaching whatever this area holds. A man on a mission. (What mission, Sam desperately hopes to find out, since it seems to be a lot different than his own.)
And what it holds is what looks to be surveillance tech. Or, more accurately, data, as Bucky had stated. There’s a few computer screens on a large, circular desk in the center of the room, surrounded by a couple of filing cabinets. Against the back wall are a few more screens, with time stamps like security footage, but most of the images are static. There’s a couple shots of an empty hallway here and there, but besides that, everything’s blank.
Bucky stumbles towards a swivel chair near the desk, pushing it to the side before looking at the computers. “Delete.” He rasps out, and for not the first time in the past few minutes, Sam is beyond confused. Wouldn’t the point of infiltrating HYDRA’s data be to extrapolate useful information from it?
Sam shifts himself closer so he can see what’s on the screens. There’s… not much. There's a basic desktop background (with the HYDRA logo of all things, because discreteness and subtlety is apparently a non-issue in your own base), and a few innocuous programs open.
He’s about to suggest taking a second to talk about what’s happening, maybe- he doesn’t know- pause a moment to explain what the hell is going on? But suddenly, Bucky just… drops. Flat out falls. Dead, to the ground.
It’s so startling that Sam just stares for a second. He’s seen Bucky push himself to his limits, has seen the super soldier collapse after strenuous missions and training where he went too hard, but never like this. Never this sudden. Without warning.
Though- a bit foolishly, Sam thinks- there clearly was a warning. Like the fact that Bucky clearly isn’t in his right mind. He’s clearly injured. That much is obvious from the puddles of blood coagulating on the keyboard, dripping between the letters and filling the cracks- all from the short time Bucky had loomed over it.
So, once his brain decides to start working again, Sam does the first logical thing since stepping into this place. “Torres, get me a medevac for Bucky, stat.” He forces his voice to stay steady, calm. There’s no reason to panic. (But there is, because Bucky-) “And prep a computer for a data dump. Looks like there’s some important info here.”
Well, a bit of a lie. Since Sam has literally no idea whether the information on these computers is anything worth investigating. But Bucky seemed to think so. (Delete, he said. Delete. But why-?)
He hastily leans over to make sure Bucky’s still breathing, which- thank god- he is, and surveys the area around him, checking if there’s anything he can do. Not much, is the conclusion he comes to. The room is empty, save for the tech equipment and cabinets, but at the very least it doesn’t seem like Bucky is actively dying. Which is a bit of a low bar, but hey, it’s not like there is anything Sam can do.
He kneels next to Bucky on the ground, lightly trailing his fingers over the blood caked onto his cheek. Hovering, anticipating- though what, he’s not sure. There’s nothing he can do. Hell, he doesn’t even know what’s wrong with Bucky. Doesn’t even know if the man passed out from blood loss, pain, exhaustion, or- most likely- a combination of the three. All he does know is that Bucky’s put them both in a shitty situation that Sam will have to take the reins on.
Though, honestly, it’s a bit hard to be mad at the unconscious, bleeding man who passed out in a place run by Nazis. Even if that unconscious, bleeding man was the one who got them into the spot in the first place.
Sam stands up, then, mind full of questions and way too little answers. In fact, this whole operation has just been confusing as hell, and now he has to deal with his partner being out of commission. After his partner- again, the one he was supposed to rescue, because that’s why he was here in the first place- already murdered every last person in this base.
The weight of everything rests heavy on his chest, threatening to crush his lungs, overwhelming his primal senses. Breathe, he reminds himself, breathe. Yeah, that wouldn’t be a good thing to forget. He’s not especially looking forward to the headline “Captain America and Sergeant Barnes: Both Found Unconscious in HYDRA Base Surrounded by Bodies.” That’s just a mouthful, is what it is. “Captain America Saves Idiot Partner” has a much better ring to it.
He wipes his hands off on his uniform (it’s white, it’s white, it wasn’t meant for this much red), stands, and takes a deep breath in. Inhales. Holds. Exhales. Looks down at Bucky. Looks away. Ponders, for a second, how his life has come to this. All because of a fucking jog he took a decade ago.
He’s usually pretty good at taking control of the situation. Going with the flow. Rolling with the punches. Manipulating the scenario in a way that leads to an amicable ending. Not quite happily ever after, but good. That’s something he prides himself on: the ability to fight for the greater good, and come out on top. It takes work, it takes a toll, but ultimately, it works out in the end.
But this…? Sam’s not quite sure what this is. HYDRA, obviously. But there’s more. Something below the surface. The ugly underbelly to an enigmatic and surreptitious organization thought defunct. Vulnerable and exposed, but elusory and- so far- incomprehensible. Stripping the words from his already taciturn partner. Stripping something else, as well.
(And he hates feeling helpless. Hates being unable to help when there’s very obviously something that needs help. And it’s Bucky. Of course, it’s Bucky. But he just doesn’t understand.)
So instead, he focuses on the things he can do. In this case, taking care of whatever data Bucky knows is on these computers. Keeping his eye on the prone form of his partner, Sam pulls out a flash drive from a side pocket in his suit (ignoring the way Bucky’s blood on his hands leaves smudged fingerprints against its smooth, grey surface), and sticks it into the side of the middle screen.
A large “UPLOADING” appears in bold white lettering on the display. Thanks, Torres. An unconscious and slightly hysterical chuckle rolls past his lips. Hey, he may be better than your average citizen with most tech, but that doesn’t mean he wants to do all the complicated shit while on a mission. A little stick with decryption software and all the data needed to decode and upload important files on a whim is a pretty neat thing to have. Especially in situations like this, where he has- and he can’t empahsize this enough- no clue what the fuck is going on.
Sam just hopes the flash drive info will give him some insight into what the hell is happening. For Bucky’s sake.