The (Mis)Assignment
"I am your new handler."
A woman — The Wife, he remembers — stands in front of him, panting and bleeding a little at the temple. There’s blood on her, some of it's hers, and some, Bucky assumes, isn’t. Her long, brown hair is in disarray and her clothes are torn and dirty. She’s got one high heeled shoe and a flat one on, both caked in blood as well.
The Asset isn't yet allowed to speak, but Bucky is able to at least shake the head.
"I am your new handler," she repeats. "You are to take your orders from me and no one else. I—"
Bucky is able to maneuver his body enough to look at her, and he shakes his head again. “The Asset is already charged with a handler.”
He can’t say the name, because he isn’t programmed to do that, and he can’t ask for her help or ask her to kill him, please, I’m a monster because he isn’t programmed for that either, so he just goes back to sharpening the edge of his knife.
He hears her uneven footsteps echo away down the concrete and steel hallway. He doesn’t know how long she’s gone for, but he knows when she returns because he can hear the sniffling and cooing of a baby.
"Here's the re-assignment," she says, and he hears the metal tray of weapons behind him clang unattractively, disrupted by something heavy crashing down on it.
He turns, and his handler's — his former handler’s — head is staring back at him with a very neutral, if not stern expression.
She's right. The death of a handler (as rare as one is) should mean that he destroys the body and reports back to whatever base he woke up in. The issue with that was that his handler had destroyed that base and there was no body seen to be taken care of.
It made sense that he should be passed to the spouse in this case.
He looks up at her.
She's still breathing heavily and is hunching slightly over the bundle. He can see a tiny hand waving above the fabric, reaching towards the woman’s face, and he feels something in the middle of his body pull forward slightly, like he should walk. Bucky wants to walk towards the woman, but the Asset isn’t allowed yet.
It’s not relevant.
“What are the orders?” he asks when she doesn’t tell him immediately. Usually, he gets a file or a list or his red book, meant for him to read in the privacy of wherever he’s told to go.
She blinks and stares at him like she doesn’t quite understand. “What?”
He drops the tension in his body, noticing some fear in her eyes. He doesn’t know how threatening he really looks like this, but she’s clearly come from a situation.
(Inside his head, Bucky wonders, sardonically, how calming carrying around the decapitated head of your husband must be in a place like this)
“What are the orders?” he repeats.
She shuffles the bundle and throws a look over her shoulder. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but, apparently, she doesn’t find it. She scurries inside then and kneels in front of him. He doesn’t know if it’s to keep his attention or because she’s too exhausted to stand, but either way, he doesn’t reach out to touch her and help her land softly. He isn’t programmed for that.
“Your orders,” she begins, her tone wavering a bit. (There’s blood trickling down the side of her mouth, and that’s about when Bucky clues in that she might just be dying.) “are to keep my boy with you at all times. He is to be safe—” She turns and coughs, a vile blackened red painting the concrete. “He is to be cared for—“ This woman is dying, and it sinks in right next to the fact that there are gunshots ringing outside of his room and they are steadily getting closer.
“Soldier!” she snaps, raising a free hand to throw into his hair and squeezing.
He doesn’t react.
“Anthony Edward Stark is to be loved.” she gasps out, thrusting the large bundle into his arms. “Do you understand your orders?”
He looks down at the bundle. The infant is swaddled tight in a thin, striped blanket underneath the bloodied, bulky fleece. The infant is small, or at least, it looks small compared to what it’s wrapped in. It has black hair and flushed skin, and looks as though it could have been born just hours ago.
The Asset — the Soldier, because that's what she'd called him — didn't know much about infants aside from the rudimentary facts to keep one alive. Bucky, however, knew enough about babies to know that this one was much calmer and cognizant as he’d ever known they could be. The dark blue eyes seemed to be looking back at him with the all the scrutiny he was probably looking at it with.
The orders, themselves, were simple ones.
This bundle was small enough to transport just about anywhere (You're going to have to settle somewhere, you idiot), so he'd be able to keep it with him until the infant grew. The Soldier was more than capable of keeping the infant safe. Threats to it would have to be eliminated completely, and Bucky was just grateful that the bundle made for a small target. (Easy to hide and easy to track. You're gettin' somewhere, soldier— Hey, watch his head.) He knew he could care for it. He knew it would need to be bathed and fed regularly. The Soldier could watch over it while it slept, and find time to recharge when they finally made it to somewhere relatively safe.
His orders were simple, and yet . . .
Anthony Edward Stark is to be loved.
She's gone when he looks up, and he doesn't have time to register any sort of suprise at her escape. There's an absolute chaos reigning behind him, and it's a wonder none of it has found it's way into his cell. He has the mind to turn around, but that's when he hears it. It shouldn't be anything special in the rain of gunfire echo around the compound, so, Bucky figures, it must have been coming from one gun.
Maria's Stark's gun.
And now that gun is silent.
Her blood is cooling on the back of his head and her son is reaching up to get some sort of hold on something that Bucky doesn't know on what. (His face? The world? Good luck with that, kid.)
Loved.
Yeah, he thinks he can do that one, too.