Escaped

You had been in hiding since that psycho came to the compound and killed all the other soldiers. You jumped from town to town, never staying in one place for more than six months.Then the whole 50-percent-of-the-population thing happened. It was a bit easier then. You were able to walk into town without continuously looking over your shoulder. You still looked over your shoulder, but the threat was reduced.

But then the population all came back. Including someone who looked very familiar. You saw him in the coffee shop. You were trying to slowly integrate yourself back into normal society, and thought a small coffee shop in a small town outside New York might be the first step. But then you saw him.

Your hand rested on the knife holster at your hip, your eyes focused on him. You wrapped your skilled hand around the hilt as you stood behind him in line, glaring at the back of his head. His hair was cut shorter, all the split ends were gone. It was washed for the first time in who knows how long and he looked different. But you still recognized him.

“Can I help you?” he asked without turning around to face you.

“You’re here for me, aren’t you?”

He turned around with a groan, rolling his eyes. “What?”

You pulled the knife from your hip. “Well, guess what, Asset? You’re not taking me in.” You held the tip to his throat. “I will take you out with me if I have to.”

He looked at you before recognition donned on his face. “Oh.” He glanced around the room. “Sam!”

“What’s up, man?” another guy asked, taking a bite of a bagel.

He nodded to your hand, the metal glinting in the low light of the coffee house. “Zemo missed one.” He gently pushed the knife away from his throat. “You might wanna put that away, soldat. People get suspicious.”

You glared and tucked the knife back into the holster. “So, you’re not taking me back?”

“No,” he assured you. “HYDRA’s dead as a door-nail. And I would die before going back, too.” The soldier looked at his companion. “What do you think? Can you take another brainwashed ex-assassin in your life?”

“She can’t be much worse than you, Barnes.”

He laughed at his friend’s retort. “Nice one, Wilson.” He turned to you. “What do you say you hide out with us for a while? We can talk about our shared horrifying experiences and missing huge chunks of our consciousnesses over coffee.”

“Oh, what the hell? Why not?”

“Awesome. And, if you want, I know someone who can get the star off your arm.”

You’d been convinced to hide out in the soldier’s apartment.

“Bucky. Call me Bucky,” he’d insisted. He set you up in his spare room. The apartment was nice. It was tastefully decorated, the fridge and pantry was stocked fully, and there were plenty of light sources around the apartment. The spare room had a nice, comfortable bed, a far cry from the sleeping bag you kept with you on the run. There was a nightstand with a lamp sitting on top and a desk in the corner of the room by a window. There were dark shades over the window, keeping the room hidden from the outside world.

“Thank you, Bucky,” you said for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

Bucky and Sam helped you make steps towards a normal life. Sam helped both you and Bucky when it came to the things about the world you’d missed in HYDRA’s captivity. Most of it was pop culture, and, more specifically, music.

“No, you gotta listen to Pink Floyd,” Sam told you over breakfast one morning. “They’re pretty much the symbol of punk rock.”

“Pink Floyd. Got it.” You scribbled it down in the notebook of things Sam said you needed to know, next to Sitcoms, Friends. Sam said you weren’t allowed to start that one without him.

“Sam, stop trying to corrupt (Y/N),” Bucky said, setting his glass of orange juice on the table.

“I’m not corrupting her, I’m educating her. There’s a difference.”

This started their daily bickering. You’d noticed that they did a lot of that, but none of it was really serious. They brought up things that you assumed happened before they met you. The one they brought up the most had something to do with a steering wheel in D.C.

You smiled and shook your head. You were really growing to love them.

“So, you don’t have any memories of your past? At all?” Bucky asked you as you played a game of cards at his apartment.

“Well, I have my name, (Y/N). I have some hazy flashbacks,” you said, tossing a card on a table. “Lots of lights, lots of people. But that’s all I remember. Your move.”

“How’d you get out of Zemo’s rampage?” Bucky asked, tossing a card on the table. “I thought you were all frozen.”

“Not all of us. After HYDRA was exterminated, we were all stuck in those fucking tubes. But, uh, it was an accident, really. You know, the place was crawling with rats. No more agents around for upkeep. One of them, the rats, i mean, stepped on the release button on my chamber. I heard the psycho come in before I saw him. I ducked into one of the million hideaways and I heard the shots. Then I heard the fight between those two guys. The one with the shield and the one in the metal suit.”

Bucky nodded and took a sip of the drink in front of him. “And that’s when you got out of there?”

“Yeah.”

“So, how did you manage after you left?”

You gave a harsh laugh. “Not well, at first. I moved from place to place. I didn’t get out of Russia for six months. It was rough. But, you know, supersoldier strength meant I could hunt quicker and easier. I dropped a lot of weight because I wasn’t eating. I got to Moscow and bought a train ticket to France. I kept my head down and kept working west. Eventually, I’d managed to scrounge up enough money to buy a plane ticket to America and came to New York. I jumped from alleyway to alleyway. I begged for money for food. My English was broken, people distrusted me. Of course, I hid the arm as well as I could. And honestly? Half the population disappearing was the best thing for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there were significantly less people. Houses and apartments were empty. There was plenty of food, at least for a while.” You tossed another card onto the pile. “After a while, I started taking the cash people had left in their homes. I know it was wrong, but it was all I could do to keep food in my stomach.”

Bucky nodded. “I get that. Uno.”

You sighed. “How are you this good?” you muttered, sorting through your cards. “Yeah. Well, then everyone came back. I was screwed. I kept the money I had stolen close to me. I felt bad, though. But then I ran into you and Sam at the coffee shop and here we are. Draw four.”