Conversations
Turns out Natasha’s taking on Capitol Hill. She could eat them alive, Sam thinks. But she won’t, because that wouldn’t serve her purposes. Sure, he doesn’t know her purposes, but he’s got an idea of what spies are like, and he’s pretty sure that they tend to keep their skills on the down low as much as possible. She says that it’s a good idea to look at what HYDRA had on Bucky, tells Sam that Bucky’s probably not home, but wishes them both luck anyway. They can call her, and if she ever gets out of the hearings, she might even join them. She’s got experience with this sort of thing, she says, tone grim. Sam doesn’t ask, but he saw her in action. He knows, in that way that makes him not want to know at all. He wonders if there’s a file on her somewhere in that data dump.
Steve is nice to the nurses. He’s charming and all Captain-America-not-Steve-Rogers, a distinction that Sam is learning to see. There’s overlap, yeah, because Steve Rogers is a genuinely nice guy, but there’s a lot that doesn’t seep through to the Captain. Running bullheaded after a man who may or may not be his best friend is all Steve.
Before Sam can get Steve to agree to a nap - it would make the whole overnight thing go faster - Tony calls. Steve puts him on speaker, for reasons that Sam can’t quite determine. Sam says hi to Iron Man and secretly hopes that maybe he can get an introduction to War Machine one day. When all this is over.
“Hey Cap? I’m proud and all - Popsicle’s first governmental crisis - but you could have called for help.”
Maybe Tony doesn’t know Steve as well as he ought to, Sam thinks.
“I had it handled. It was mine to deal with, my problem.”
Tony makes a vague noise.
“See, that sounds familiar. Sounds a lot like what Pepper yelled at me for. Well, not exactly, because I wasn’t fighting Nazis on a skyboat, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Back me up here, mystery man.”
Sam shrugs, remembers Tony can’t see him, and then speaks. “He did have help. He asked me.” Not to get into a dick measuring contest with Iron Man or anything, but.
“Aw, you don’t trust me, Cap?”
Steve, on the bed, rolls his eyes.
“It wasn’t official business. We didn’t know it was a problem until it was a problem. It was better to deal with it on the ground.”
Steve somehow manages to turn the berating around and talks to Tony about looking into the Winter Soldier file. Tony is apparently already waist deep in HYDRA’s guts. Something about scraping. Sam’s not a computer man.
“What’s the plan with that? Just for the mems? You know, once ice man to another?”
Tony really doesn’t know Steve, because Sam sees the small flinch around Steve’s eyes when he mentions the ice. Or maybe he only sees it because Steve’s tired and healing.
“No, it’s different than that. It’s…” yeah, Sam wouldn’t be sure about sharing this over the phone either. “It’s Bucky. It’s him.”
“Wait, woah, hold up, Cap. Hold up. You’re telling me that your dead buddy is actually not so dead? And he’s working for HYDRA? And you still didn’t call me?”
“I didn’t know the whole time.” Steve sounds like he’s embarrassed about that fact, but it’s not like Steve saw the guy’s face until he literally punched the mask off, so Sam’s gonna have to say that the guilt from that is entirely misplaced. “He’s gone now, and I need to find him. It’s him, I know it is. They had him and they - he didn’t know me right away.”
Tony makes a noise of consideration.
“I’ll run through what I’ve got right now, and if there’s anything that mentions him, I’ll get it to you.”
Tony hangs up a little while later, promising what files he’s already got analyzed, as well as everything else he can get off of that file dump, and Sam gets Steve to sleep, finally.
It leaves him alone with his own thoughts.