Chapter 65
Avengers Tower
September 2011
“I don’t like it,” Natasha said quietly.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. Natasha was the only person he knew who he was comfortable touching casually. “Neither do I,” he admitted.
She looked up and studied his face carefully. “Zima…”
“I remember him,” he blurted. “I think. It’s like… I have all these images in my head, facts, memories, all coming back to me in a blizzard. I can’t grab hold of any one thing for long.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ground himself in the middle of the chaos that had taken over his mind since Captain America called him by a dead man’s name. “His mom’s name was Sarah,” he whispered. “We were… we were friends. He was so much smaller–all skin and bones and stubborn pride. But that all happened to a different person.”
Natasha turned into him, reached up, and gripped his shoulders. “It’ll be fine,” she said softly.
“But what if it’s not?” He knew he was being illogical and didn’t care. “I–I can’t be two people, Pauk. That man I was… he was good. He was a friend and a soldier and he fought for what he believed in. I’m a hired killer.” He looked down at his hands in the breath of space between their bodies: one flesh and bone, knuckles callused and skin riven with scars, the other silver and still dysfunctional. Stark had done a temporary repair on the metal arm while he worked on a modern prosthesis. “I’m a monster. I can’t be both.”
“Why not?” Natasha asked softly. “I’ve changed as well, my Zima. We can find our way out of the dark places. Find something to fight for other than just our masters.”
He laughed. It sounded broken. “I don’t even know my name. Zima? ‘Soldier’? James Buchanan Barnes? Bucky? That man I was…” He thought about the few memories that had come back with any kind of clarity. “He would hate me.”
“Do you hate yourself?” Natasha asked.
Startled, he looked up and met her eyes.
“He is you,” she pressed. “You are Bucky. All those memories, they’re still hiding in your brain. They could never beat that decency out of you. Why do you think they kept wiping your mind? Why do you think they used me as your leash for so many years? Why do you think they put you in cryo storage? There’s a goodness in you that even their neural programming and beatings and training couldn’t stamp out.”
He bowed his head and let out a long breath.
Natasha pulled him closer and pressed her forehead to his. “We’ll figure it out,” she promised, voice like steel. “We always do.”
“My spider,” he murmured, and closed his eyes.
“I owe him,” she admitted a moment later.
“For what?”
“Trusting me,” she whispered. “Caring for me. Taking me into this place. I owe all of them, really, but Steve could’ve turned against me and everyone but Clint would’ve followed his lead. And Clint’s instincts are rarely wrong. If he thinks there’s something off about this situation, then I can’t let Steve go alone.”
“He’ll never let you.”
They both flinched apart.
Miss Lewis and Stark stood in the door to the storage room.
“How long have you been there?” Natasha snapped.
Darcy shrugged. Her face was cool, unimpressed. He had to admire her composure. And intelligence. Darcy Lewis was a force to be reckoned with; Zima/Bucky (he still didn’t know what to call himself) had worked that out quickly. “Not long. I just heard your last two sentences. Very touching.”
“She’s right,” Zima said quietly. “Rogers… Steve… he won’t want us to risk it.”
Natasha eyed Stark and Darcy warily. “And what about you two?”
Darcy smirked. “Let’s just say we’re more open to… alternate solutions.”
“You want us to go after him,” Natasha said flatly.
“All the rest of us are too high-profile to just drop off the grid,” Darcy said. “And at any rate, Clint and Tony are the only of us who are good in a fight.”
“The Hulk?” Zima asked.
“Has a tendency to smash buildings along with the bad guys,” Tony said. “You think I’m incapable of subtlety? Wait till you see the big guy in action. Bruce is perfectly content staying here and working in the labs until we have absolutely no other option.”
“How will we get out?” Natasha asked. “SHIELD’s likely got a blanket over this place thicker than surveillance on the Iranian embassy.”
“You forget our houseguest,” Darcy said with a smile.
Zima narrowed his eyes slightly. Her expression was icy and uncompromising, the face of someone who had lost and lost and lost again in life, who wasn’t going to just let herself lose again without a fight. This was something she wanted, and she knew what had to be done to accomplish it.
Loki stepped around the doorframe from the hallway.
“You set me up quite nicely for a dramatic entrance,” he commented.
“Least I could do,” Darcy said. “Loki’s agreed to smuggle you out past the SHIELD cordon.”
“What makes you think he’ll come back?” Natasha asked.
Darcy shrugged. “He wants to be here, not the other way around. And we have a tracker-slash-voodoo-sensor that Jane and Tony cooked up. He’ll cover you three in an illusion, get you out of SHIELD’s way, and head on back.”
“I’ve got disguises ready for after Loki leaves you,” Tony said. “Clint helped me put them together. A private helicopter will be waiting at a small airport half an hour south of here by car. There’s a silver Honda Civic parked three blocks away, plate 535-ZUR.” He tossed Natasha a set of keys. “Address of the airfield is already in the car’s system. You’ll get there an hour or two behind Steve, but it’s the best I can do short-notice.”
“It’s excellent,” Natasha said. “Who’s been coaching you in covert ops?”
“SHIELD,” Tony said.
Zima blinked.
“You people keep forgetting that I have a genius level IQ,” Tony said. “I was a SHIELD consultant? Remember? Fury gave me access to lots of mission files–and those he didn't, I got anyway. There’s not much of a difference between learning how you guys work and how to evade you.”
“All clear?” Darcy asked, looking around the room. “Yes? Kay.”
“Come with me, please,” Loki said, smiling like a shark, or a wolf. “I’ll be kind and allow you to masquerade as a couple, hmm?”
“Can I punch him?” Natasha asked Darcy.
Darcy patted Loki’s shoulder irreverently. “He’s actually being helpful; let’s not punish good behavior.”
“I would appreciate it if you would cease comparing me to a pet,” Loki muttered.
Darcy laughed. “I know, and that’s exactly why I keep doing it. You’re fun to irritate. Good luck sneaking out, guys. I need to go put out a fire involving yet another State Department junior aide who thinks they can bring the Avengers to heel.”
She marched away down the hall.
“I pity that aide,” Loki commented, then looked surprised that he’d done so.
“You have no idea,” Tony informed him. “She got into an argument with me about a month and a half after she came on-staff…” He shook his head. “Not pretty. Definitely got my attention, though. You guys ready for this?”
It took Zima a second to realize Tony was talking to himself and Natasha. “Yes,” Natasha said.
“You are certain you can evade SHIELD?” Loki asked. “It would not go well for your teammates should Director Fury discover that you are helping the good Captain.”
“He doesn’t like to go by that title,” Tony said.
Natasha glanced up at Zima. He smiled a little at her.
“Between the two of us,” she said, “we should be able to work it out.”