Bucky had not counted on being captured along with the rest of the Avengers.
He had not counted on seeing five Hydra goons visibly crackling at the sight of him, all bound up and silent.
These idiots are barely 20.
Transporting all of them in a van that is not even bullet proof.
And yet one of them can't help himself.
He bends down to Bucky, saying - just loud enough to be audible for everyone else - "I heard you like chicken soup."
Something in Bucky freezes.
He knows, then and there, that these people will not survive.
He had sworn to himself to never ever kill.
Not after all the things he had already done.
But he had also known that life had a tendency to throw curve balls. And the only idea even more sickening then taking another life is the idea that any of these idiots might clue Steve in about...
They are still kids.
Stupid.
Inexperienced.
More playing at being kidnappers, then really posing a threat.
It does not matter.
Not really.
Not when they try to change vehicles and are too stupid to secure all of them.
It is not pleasant, but Bucky can rip his own shackles.
His right hand will hate him for a while.
But he is able to plant his metal fist right at the temple of the first guy, and maybe even through.
Number two tries to open fire.
A ricochet of his arm hits number three.
He does not have time to check who else might be hurt, as he plants his boot right in the throat of number two.
He has to hand it to number four. Trying to attack with a crowbar is a stupid idea, but a brave one. Bucky only takes out this ones kneecaps.
Which leaves number five.
The whisperer.
Bucky never knew for certain, but apparently his arm is strong enough to rip out parts of someones spine.
This guy does not look so amused now.
His other arm is shaking.
Fuck it, most of him is shaking.
He does not want to contemplate what he just did.
Nat walking up to him is not the best start for anything.
But at least she is unphased.
"Soldat." There is something Russian in the way she clips the syllables. He is almost tempted to take her out as well.
Instead he just stares, trying, and failing to fight down the whooshing in his own ears.
She presents him her shackles and he does what is expected. He breaks them. Teetering on the edge of loosing control. He knows that his other version knows her. He is not sure if this is enough to guarantee her survival.
And then she says, just as forceful: бежать.
And he does.
He is out of there before his mind even translated the sentence.
Run.
He knows in that moment that she knows.
She must have seen the pictures in his file.
And she must have understood.
Heard the stories that went with it.
Of a soldier.
Long ago.
They had taken him straight to the tundra.
When the weather outside is just as likely to kill you as the people inside... it is safe to let you run free.
They had known that he would have no way of leaving.
And things were simple.
If he disobeyed he got punished.
If he did not, he got to live with the rest of them.
He had been accepting.
Almost accepting.
Because this too was a kind of normal.
And him alone against 15 constantly armed people?
Plus 12 civilians who were even more mental?
He was not an easy person to be around.
But he did not harbor a death wish.
So there was that.
He had not entirely merged with his new programming yet.
But they were getting there.
He was on his way to becoming the Winter Soldier.
His programming was mostly solid.
Mostly.
Until a light out.
It had not even been the absence of light.
It had been the on-off that went on before.
It had reminded him of something.
Not fireworks.
Though that had been a close second.
Something about an apartment and another light bulb burning through. The third one this month.
There had been the shortest memory of laughter.
Bucky could have sworn it was real.
And that programming within him had broken.
He had remembered.
He had remembered that they had claimed Steve was dead.
But they had never presented direct proof.
And suddenly he needed to get out of there.
He still had the knife in his hand.
Taking on domestic duties, being given to understand that a knife does nothing against people who might carelessly kill you.
There had still been the laughing of one of the soldiers.
It had mixed with Steves.
And the next thing Bucky became aware of was... silence.
He still remembered flashes, of killing people, of screams of agony. Of people trying to get him to obey.
He had been stronger.
This once they had been stronger.
And he could be free.
In theory he could get out there and be free.
He had tried.
Taking warm clothes, just enough food to get by, he had noticed the lack of fuel, but had not thought anything about it... until it finally dawned on him.
These people... they had been trapped alongside him.
There was no fuel, not enough to make it out of here.
There was no place to run to either.
He was trapped.
And he had just killed the only company that he had left.
He had left enough clues to...
And in one moment it had all come crashing down.
What was the use?
If Steve really was gone?
And he had build a track record of... killing.
What was the point?
He tried.
For a more then a day and a half he tried.
But in the end there were only two answers:
A head shot or the cryochamber.
He was not even sure if they did not come down to the same thing.
But in the end he had tried to live.
It had been the last time Bucky had entered the chamber. What came out of that had no relation to him any longer.
He could have been free.
He could have starved in the wilderness or he could have perished in the cold.
He had not.
He had chosen to live.
No matter the costs.
It been his greatest downfall.
The one thing he could not explain.
He lived with it.
But he could not picture ever... admitting.
Live on the streets was worse then he remembered.
The cold.
The wet.
Looking over his shoulder.
Loneliness.
He knew that he could continue like this.
He also, on a more abstract level, understood that he could still end things.
Or he could...
It had taken time.
Not only working out that he wanted to be back at the tower. Not for the warmth or the light. But because he started to miss these people.
If Nat could have seen him now - two weeks of grime on his clothes and getting sick from a lack of food - she would have... he knew she seemed indifferent most of the time. But she would not have made all these efforts for people if she had truly been.
Clint would say something stupid.
Sam would rec some TV show or another till Bucky felt like opening up about what ever it was that was bothering him - or worked though it on his own.
Tony would say something snarky. He almost always did. And Bucky had even come to recognize that there was a human heart under most of these statements... except for the one time when Miss Potts had made him sleep on the couch for almost a week.
And Steve... Steve would be just his usual, warm, soft, affectionate presence.
Or would he?
It was not even funny how bad he craved a hug.
Just any form of human contact.
And he did crave it from them.
Bucky knew that promising to change was pointless. He had done too many wrong things.
Way too many.
But... if he was allowed to live. If he decided that he wanted to be... was he also allowed to have the above?
If he really tried to make more of an effort?
In the end there was only one way to find out.
He would not disclose just how he had made it to the top of Stark Tower.
But he had.
And he waited.
How ever long it would take.
He had taken a seat on a corner that at least in theory allowed for a swift exit about 240 meters down...
And he had waited.
It surprised him a little that it was eventually Nat and not Steve that came out to find him.
He quickly figured that it might be just as well.
This woman never ran from anything.
She just sat down beside him and started to wait him out.
The point was that her silence didn't feel like it pressured him into any great decisions.
So he found himself admitting almost against his better judgment. "I want to live."
And she sounded almost soft when she answered: "You and me both."
He had not expected her to share a story. About her and a bunch of girls - her best friends... her only friends, as she would say. They had grown up together. They had trained together. They had shared their pain together. And at some point the red room had placed all of them in the middle of nowhere, with just enough provision for one of them to make it back alive.
He was not entirely surprised to hear her story.
It sounded plausible.
It was not even the worst he had heard in all his time.
He could understand why she didn't get all emotional. "Sometimes staying alive means making hard choices. That's just how it is."
And he was tempted to nod.
It did.
"So..." And he knew that she was still offering him a chance to run. "Made up your mind yet?"
It was the first time that Bucky allowed himself to look at the entrance that would take him back into the tower. "Is Steve angry?"
"Depends."
She sounded so casual... he found that he at least wanted to try.