fifty-six.
Gravel kicked up as Bucky marched across the abandoned lot. With his mask settled on his face, he was a man ready to get answers no matter what it took to get them. He was going to go through those doors and kill anyone who kept the answers from him. It'd been months and he was tired of not knowing.
He was a man on a mission.
Grabbing onto the handle of the metal door, he yanked with all of the strength that he could manage and pulled the door off of the hinges, effectively rendering the locks on the inside as useless as the people. He heard yelling in the Soldier's native tongue and then screaming the moment he came through the door.
One look at the light reflecting off of his arm and they knew they wouldn't survive a run-in with the man. Most of these men had grown up on stories of the man before them, but they knew of him as nothing more than an old legend, a tale the higher-ups would tell the trainees to make them behave. He was a ghost story, a myth.
More of the Senior Agents saw the man first and were terrified... Not because of an intruder, or their impending deaths... They were afraid because this was their Soldier, their Project. This was the man they'd taken from the snow come back to haunt him. The soldier that was still at war.
Before them was the man they'd plucked from a ravine and picked for a project he never knew existed. They tormented him, sawed off what was left of his arm and attached a brand new titanium one. They took him away from whatever second chance at life he could have had after the war and turned him into a machine, a weapon.
He was never theirs. He was once someone's son, someone's brother, someone's lover. They stole him away, and it was no accident. Zola wanted him the moment he was on their base. All of the others disappointed him, they failed the experimentation. This one was the only successful subject at the time, and here he was, 77 years after his first encounter with Hydra, and he was ready to kill, just like he'd been trained.
They didn't know if he was alone or if he had a team, but they all knew that either way, his skill set already made him worse than any army out there. He would have no mercy, and there would be no survivors.
When Steve finally caught onto Bucky's trail, he'd already been gone for several hours. When he made it onto the lot, he could clearly see that the door was not where it was meant to be, instead, laying right outside of the doorway. Carefully blocking his chest with his shield, he made his way inside.
It was chaos.
The bodies of Hydra agents were strewn all across the main room. Steve had to step over several to even get to the hallway that led to the rest of the building. He only tried to check the pulse of two, but he gave up on that, knowing that with the state that Bucky was in now, there would be no survivors.
Steve was strangely okay with that, knowing that any one of these assholes might know Peter's location. Steve didn't know how many people in the building were still alive and he worried he was too late to save any possible survivors... But these were Hydra agents, he didn't want to save them anyways.
Rescuing people was so deeply ingrained into Steve's mind that he spared the bad guys. He didn't really kill unless he needed to. There was always someone else to do the dirty work. Steve had his strategies, everyone else was good with the on-the-fly shit.
He swept over the bottom floor before slowly and silently making his way up a flight of bloodied metal stairs. With his shield still raised, he rounded a corner. Somewhere not far off he could hear quiet grunting and cursing. He furrowed his brows and advanced farther down the hallway.
He rounded another corner but stopped short. Just across the open space in front of him was Bucky over the body of an agent. He was holding a large knife and every few seconds, he would raise it and plunge it deep into the agent's chest... The only problem was, that agent looked way past dead.
Steve hung his shield on his back and stepped out into the open space, slowly making his way towards Bucky. He gently called his lover's name as he inched closer, trying to gauge any reaction he might get from the man. He didn't get one, as the man before him was far too indulged in repeatedly stabbing the everloving fuck out of the agent beneath him.
On Bucky's next lift and preparation to stab, Steve grabbed onto his arm. "Bucky! Bucky, look, he's dead! Stop, look! "
He watched as the wide-eyed brunette looked down at the man beneath him and let out a breath, slowly lowering his arm. He wiped the bloodied blade on the sleeve of his shirt and returned the knife to its holster as he stood. "Let's go."
Steve followed Bucky, just like he always had. Except for this time he was much farther back than he'd ever been before. To tell the truth, he was afraid, not for himself, but for Bucky. He saw what Bucky'd been doing, and God only knows how long he'd been doing it before Steve showed up.
Even now, from eight feet behind and only a view of the man's back, Steve could tell that Bucky was fuming. His shoulders were squared, and he wasn't presently worried about the blood covering his hands and his knees. His breaths were long and heavy as he quickly walked ahead, assuming that Steve was following.
Once they reached the privacy of the Quinjet that Steve brought, he sighed and sat his shield down. "How did you get here?"
Bucky didn't answer. Instead, he just sat.
"Did you find anything out?" Steve knelt down close to Bucky and placed a tentative hand on the man's shaking shoulder.
Bucky's words were like a violent punch to the face. "Rumlow is alive."
Steve remembered the last time he saw the man and his scarred face. 'You know, he knew you. Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky.'
"He's alive, and he's at the same base that they're keeping Peter." Bucky's eyes were wide, filled with rage and terror and sadness all at once. Steve didn't blame him. Brock Rumlow was one of the men that was there when Bucky was being tortured. Steve was once able to piece that together after Bucky had awoken from a nightmare, shouting something about a skull and crossbones.
"Bucky..."
"No, no! No, if he's there, it means they were able to save him, and he's there with Peter... And if he's there, then God knows what they've done to him, if he's even still alive..." Bucky was becoming erratic, and again, Steve didn't blame him. But he needed to try and calm down, as he was getting dangerously close to another strong outburst.
In the back of Steve's mind, he could hear Rumlow's voice again. 'He remembered you. I was there; he got all weepy about it. Until we put his brain back in the blender.'
"Bucky, I don't want to have to try and sedate you again, so you need to calm down. You need to breathe."
Bucky carded his bloody fingers through his long hair. "He was right under our noses!"
Steve scooted closer, curling his wide body into itself as he sat at Bucky's feet. "What are you talking about?"
Bucky looked up from the floor and held eye contact with Steve for a long moment before he spoke again. His voice was quivering and he hated it, but it had to be said. "Peter's clues were right... And we were there... And he was right below us. The whole time, he was there and we just left him."
Steve touched Bucky's cheek to distract him. "Buck, baby, look at me... We know where he is now, and we can go get him, and we can bring him home."
Bucky nodded, hands over Steve's. "We can bring him home."