project star-eater v2

For a while between 2018 and 2021, I was working on a completely rewritten version of PSE. It didn't get very far, obviously.

I was really feeling some whump at the time, so there's actually no H/C in this, but there is nightmare Stucky! I tried writing in more detail, but it was difficult to maintain that level of detail and the otherwise action-paced overall style. Writing Tony as a Civil War-style dick also took the fun out of writing him as a character, and writing Tony's dialogue was a highlight in the original. I just wasn't into it the same way anymore—it took me 3 or 4 years to get 6 new chapters in.

It generally takes a darker tone than PSE and features most of the same warnings.

The tabs start at chapter 2 because chapter 1 was intended to stay the same. I also reused the scene with Sam in chapter 2 from this to extend the original chapter 2 in the posted version. Bi Sam is still canon to STARCROSSED, though! It just doesn't come up.

If there was one way for me to describe PSE v2, it would be this:

There is also an extras page for this version, which you can find by clicking the link right here.

The sun beats down hot and heavy on the rooftop, glinting harshly off the shiny metal grating. The only sound up here is the whirring of a fan large enough to sound like a helicopter. It's almost abandoned; if Steve hadn't just cleared the area of HYDRA soldiers, he'd think things were business as usual. He slots his shield across his back and wipes sweat from his forehead. Nursing his formerly-dislocated shoulder, he pops the external parts of his implants back into place and breathes in the calm.

There are eyes on him.

Familiar, but not as familiar as they should be, the weighted difference between a pair of eyes forest green and a pair of starless black holes in eyesockets. The difference between a long-lost pal and an intimate enemy. Between a lover and an assassin.

"You don't have to do this," he says, not turning around. Steve can *feel* the sights on a rifle boring into the back of his neck. "You don't—" he starts, unsure of how to finish.

He wouldn't have to hear the sound to know when to move. Steve ducks into a forward roll, grabbing his shield as he gets to his feet. He glances back just once and regrets it immediately. His eyes find a metal ladder on the wall of the next building over. There's less than ten feet separating the walls. Steve swerves another bullet and springs off the edge of the rooftop, landing solidly on the ladder. The metal burns even through his gloves.

Steve begins his descent, looking for ground cover and—hopefully—back up. The ground comes at him faster than he had expecred and he takes off at a run down the alley. The city is uncharacteristically abandoned; maybe it had been evacuated. Steve remembers something with an explosion, and screaming, and Nat quickly signing something at him, but the specifics won't come back to him. Steve starts up the side of a building half a block down. All he really remembers is the empty rooftop and the bitter cold of—

He finds himself clinging not to a ladder on the side of an apartment building, but one on a train, the wind whipping past his face as distant screaming rises to meet him. He looks down and, instead of shimmering pavement, there's a sheer cliff and miles and miles of a drop. Something—*someone*—falls just out of his view and sinks with his heart.

Steve's on an entirely different rooftop now, in the late evening, with storm clouds overhead and the beginning of a storm rumbling around him. He can't see the ground from up here. His shield is dented, lying five yards away past a figure dressed in black. Hard drops of ice-cold rain pelt his face as he takes in the once-familiar silhouette.

Lightning briefly illuminates the figure's details: a face covered in slick dark gashes, a bloodied hand clutching a knife, a danging left arm that leaves them slightly hunched over.

They close the gap as the chill water rises around Steve's chest, constricting his lungs, and he hasn't had asthma in literal *decades* so why can't he breathe now—

The figure is in front of him, within kissing distance even, and Steve finds himself lost in the bottomless pits of twin black holes set in a face. He's looking for something, for a hint of familiarity, for the tortured man trapped inside the machine...

"You don't have to do this," he tries to say again, except water floods his mouth and darkness envelops him as he falls under. There's a strong grip around his middle, and then a sharp red feeling between his ribs, and then nothing.

Since Bucky was drafted.

Since Bucky died.

Since Bucky... whatever the hell happened to him that made him stand there and look at Steve with starless eyes.

He forces himself to sit up, to get up when he notices it's almost 5 AM anyway. Steve can sleep when he's dead. None of the lights are on in his apartment, but he can navigate by the very earliest sunlight coming in through the windows. He goes through the motions to make coffee.

The cracks and flashes coalesce into a fracutre of memories and he drops the knife, skin numbed by years of pain and the biting cold water, left hand still holding a crushing deathgrip on his opponent's arm. He lets go, the man in blue slipping into the undertow. For a minute, he watches the figure drift down the river, feeling as though something very important is trying to break out of his head and tell him something.

But it doesn't come from his head, it comes from his stomach, and it's a sinking feeling akin to both deel guilt and hopeless love.

He allows the water to bring him closer to his unconscious enemy, then grabs the limp but still warm body and holds it close. It fills in all of his gaps, like two broken pieces coming back together, and he nearly chokes on his own vomit at the abrupt sensation of remembering things that aren't there; recalling a specific memory and coming up with nothing; a blank space in front of him where he's supposed to write his name but he doesn't have one. The closest thing he can remember is dying the first time, drowning just like this, but alone with something shattered below his left elbow.

The muddy bank is there before him now, and he drags himself—and his companion—ashore, fingers digging into the dirt. He lays the body out in front of him, then on second thought props it up on its side. A familiar rattle of a cough comes out of the other man's body, and he finds himself mouthing words that have no meaning to him. Water dark with blood comes out of the man's mouth in heavy sputters. Even in the dark, stars twinkle in the swirling streams of blood pouring down the bank. The sight of it fills him with the irrational urge to kill the man he just saved, and he barely represses it.

The man is breathing, now, unconscious but breathing. He pulls himself to his feet and looks over the water's edge. The face reflected back at him, warped by the rapid current, is unfamiliar. It's pale, almost deathly so, and marred with thick gashes of pitch black. There are pits where eyes should be. He runs a shaking hand over the discolored streaks and feels cold under his fingers, almost freezing cold scar tissue sticking out of his skin.

This time, he does vomit, destroying his reflection and leaving a second galaxy of swirling blood in the water as he pulls back and then runs away.

He finds himself in an old compound, somewhere under the city, kicking through rusted-shut doors. His head is spinning, throbbing but not in pain, and shaking fills his body. He absently takes a swing at a window and shatters it. Next he targets a wall, punching dents into the surface with the all-consuming clamor of metal striking metal. Sparks fly under his knuckles. His muscles all tense and release rapidly, and his empty stomach heaves, and he spins in circles destroying everything he sees. He picks up a chunk of twisted metal that once belonged to the familiar silhouette of a chair and throws it across the room. Then his legs go numb and buckle underneath him. He's underwater again and can't breathe. Darkness engulfs him and he chokes into unconsciousness.

He wakes up in a ratty apartment atop a broken mattress, surrounded by the smell of lingering piss and rotten food, piles of spiral bound notebooks haphazardly laid across the room. It's probably some sort of fire hazard. He grabs the nearest one and scrawls in it, words that lose meaning as soon as they leave his pen, an endless sentence in half a dozen languages. The thought leaves him and he throws the pen and notebook both aside. He cradles his head in his arms and pulls his knees close. It's freezing in here, even though it's the middle of June, and he's sweating and shaking with a fever.

He tries to remember what he was dreaming about, only to run into the usual walls blocking off most of his memories. He remembers the small apartment. He remembers the sharp and bloody smell of rubbing alcohol on stainless steel. He doesn't have to remember the pain anchored to his shoulder, because it's still there, only half functional and weighing down on his body. He thinks he can remember warm touches. He tries to recall the exact identity of the person he can feel curled against his back, but breathing in the sensation makes his chest hurt with cold, even though the memory of the presence is warm.

He looks at his right hand and arm, studying the dark fissures etched across them. His fingers trace the smooth surface of the discolored scar tissue.

Anger overtakes him briefly and he closes his eyes and recoils like he was hit in the stomach. His nails dig welts into his thigh, the stinging grounding him. Cold blood wells up around his fingers and runs down his skin. People would kill for that blood. People had killed for that blood.

He tries to remember the name of the look in the eyes of the man he'd been fighting, the lost gaze, something in it saying he didn't want to live if...

If what? If someone he was looking for was already long gone? If the hope that had ignited in his chest was already snuffed out? It made him ache to think of his adversary in pain like that and he can't—or doesn't want to—put his finger on why.

He sits up and fumbles to light a cigarette. Ashes fall from its tip to the floor, sometimes glowing red on the way down. Smoke fills the air and the automatic action dilutes his thinking. He lets the cold back into him and fades into darkness.

"You aren't going to like what you find," Natasha tells him over toast and coffee.

Steve looks up at her, all the weeks of restless sleep on his face. "It's better than not knowing. I need to know he's at least alive."

Tasha takes a sip of her coffee, looking for all the world like she's about to discipline Steve. Her hands play over the crumbs on her plate, the edges of her chipped red nail polish standing starkly like knives in the light. "And I need to know you're not going to turn up dead in three weeks," she parries. "If they can figure out who the hell is what he leaves behind."

"This isn't the time for jokes."

"I'm not joking." Natasha looks right at him, almost right through him. It's usually hard to coax eye contact from her, but now that Steve is on the receiving end of it, he regrets asking. Her eyes are an almost familiar shade of dark green, speckled with twinkles of white, and her gaze is unmoving. She places her cup back on her plate and looks down at its contents like she's trying to read them. A sheet of straightened vivid red hair falls in front of her and obscures her face.

"I know Bucky, he wouldn't do that," Steve argues.

"And I know the Winter Soldier," she says softly, though not without venom. Natasha looks up at him and makes that existentially terrifying sort of eye contact with him again. "For five years," she adds. "I knew him and he was never any different to what you saw."

Guilt tugs at Steve's stomach as though trying to remind him that the things that happened to Bucky—which became the things that happened to Tasha—were all his fault. If he'd never been Captain America, they never would have had cause to suffer like they did. "But that's not him, Nat, you have to believe me, Bucky's—"

"You aren't listening to me, are you?" she bites.

Steve falls silent.

"He never hurt me, but I knew why he was there," she says. "That if I stepped out of line, they'd just need to say the words and he'd kill me. It won't be any different with you just because you knew him when. And he never hurt me."

He doesn't say a thing.

"I still don't remember who I was before they took me and I've been working on that for almost thirty years." As deceiving as Steve knows looks can be, reminders of Natasha's actual age are still jarring.

"But he recognized me," Steve reasons. "He'll know me if I remind him, Tasha, the way he got out is totally different from yours—"

"I know," she says darkly, taking another sip of her coffee. "But he isn't the person you're looking for. Maybe he's close," she adds to Steve's disheartened silence, "but anything he may have felt for you is... gone, probably."

"Something's on your mind," Steve concludes. Natasha looks at him harshly and stands up.

"Do you want more coffee?" she asks, reaching out for his cup.

Steve doesn't relinquish it. He leaves it half-full, sitting up and to the left of the half-eaten toast on his plate. Without looking at Natasha's face, he stands up and pushes in his chair. His hands automatically go in his pockets.

"Actually, I think it's time I should be leaving," he says, glancing at the empty space on his right wrist where a watch would go, if he wore one. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Any time," Natasha says coolly, turning around and walking to the counter.

"I'll see you around, then," says Steve, edging back to the door of her apartment. Natasha says something back to him, but her back is still turned and Steve can't make out her words. He shuts the door behind him and hurries down the hallway, hands hidden in his pockets. There's one more errand he needs to run before he can go home, though.

"How's the search?" Steve asks, entering Sam's apartment. He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over the back of a worn-out chair. It's plenty warm outside, and Steve is almost dripping with sweat, but he needs that jacket for protection.

"You look like shit," Sam says warmly.

"Thanks."

"And, no. No progress." Sam crosses his arms. "Are you still looking for him? That can't be—"

"I'd really rather not have this conversation again."

"Well, fine. You are Captain America." Sam heads to the counter and leans against it, turning back around to face Steve. "You up for brunch?"

"I'm not hungry." Steve usually consumes much, much more food than the average human. The stars filling his veins burn through calories incredibly quickly. He's barely eating enough to sustain himself as is, but his stomach is full of anxious holes. Besides, how fair would it be if he's sitting around eating nice food while Bucky's god-knows-where, probably starving? Steve's guilty conscious keeps him from eating because—after all—it's ultimately his fault that Bucky is alone, hurt, lost, and probably starving. His heart rests in his stomach.

"You know you're not fooling me with that act." Sam inspects Steve's face, giving him the awkward, twitchy feeling like he's naked on an operating table again.

"I'm just worried."

"Maybe he doesn't want you to look for him," Sam comments, pulling out a chair and sitting at his little round breakfast table. He gestures to the chair Steve hung his jacket on. Steve obliges.

"I hadn't thought of that," Steve deadpans. "But I need to find him."

"You don't need to do anything." Sam drums his fingers on the table. "There's a saying that the only things certain in life are death and taxes, and you don't have to pay taxes if you're willing to face the consequences of choosing to not. And I don't think you have to worry about dying."

Steve snorts and leans back in his chair. He brings up a hand to cover his mouth like he's trying to stifle a laugh as he stifles a yawn. "It'd be nice to not have to worry about everyone I love dying."

"Steve," Sam says, once again serious. "This whole Winter Soldier—"

"Don't call him that," Steve snaps.

"—this Bucky business isn't good for you. When was the last time you actually slept?"

"Last night," Steve truthfully lies.

Sam looks at him, straight-faced, wearing that look that says 'I'm not getting paid to sit and listen to you bullshitting yourself.' "Listen, Tony has these pills—"

"I don't want to talk to Tony."

"You know you're talking about my best friend, right?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know that your fucking boyfriend killed my parents."

"He didn't."

"Really, because these official HYDRA incident reports say otherwise."

"That wasn't him. He wouldn't do that."

"Yeah, but he did."

"They made him."

"How do you know?"

"For chrissake, because he was friends with Howard before the war. Before Stark Industries."

"Being my friend hasn't stopped people trying to kill me."

"You're just like him."

"What did you say?"

"I said you're just like him. You're just like Howard."

"Get out."

"Fine."

"You wouldn't have to."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need to sleep that much." He thinks of the uneven glowing lines radiating outward from the reactor hastily patched into Tony's chest. He thinks of the ragged scars on Bucky's face, the ones that healed wrong and turned into burnt-looking ugly scar tissue (because of what they did to him because of what had been done to Steve).

"You might not, but your body still needs it." Sam eyes him critically. "Take a break. You deserve one."

Steve stands so abruptly and with such force that his chair gets knocked over. His eyes are more white than blue and branching, glowing lines criss-cross his skin, highlighting his veins. "Why does everyone want me to give up on him?"

"I am not telling you to give up on him. I'm telling you to rest before you tear yourself apart." Sam, frustratingly calm, sips from a glass of water.

Steve almost laughs, then he almost sobs, then he dry-heaves before undergoing a dizzy spell that makes him sit down. He falls forward and buries his face in his arms. His shoulders shake but he doesn't cry. It's the weirdest feeling, being unable to cry; Steve's just run dry of tears. After a miserable eternity of breathing against his own skin, Steve looks up at Sam.

"Sam, I think I—"

"I know, Steve. I know." Sam takes a deep breath, looking at Steve's exhausted, slumped shoulders. He considers what he's about to say, words in the back of his mouth. Half against his better judgement, he says, "There might be a place."

Steve looks up at him with glassy, bruised eyes, but the stars in them glow. Sam regards the lines on his face.

"I'll only tell you if you sleep tonight."

Steve steps out of the bathroom pulling a clean undershirt on. He slides the tiny on/off switch on his implant to on, then puts it in his ear. He's about to walk into the kitchen when he hears Sam.

"Listen, Tasha, it's the only way he's going to sleep unless someone drugs him, and I'm not going to let you or anyone else do that."

Steve peeks around the corner of the doorframe and spies Sam, pacing in the middle of the kitchen, a brick of a mobile phone pressed to his ear. His backup cell, Steve concludes, though he's never seen it before. For all those conversations you don't want Tony to hear.

"There's a fifty-fifty chance he's there tomorrow, and maybe Steve'll even—" Natasha evidently cuts him off. "Are you just going to let him run himself into the ground?"

Steve thinks that the urgency in Sam's voice is just concern, but the darker parts of him are sure it isn't.

The dark, plain, subterranean room is remarkably similar to dozens of other dark, plain, subterranean rooms. The only illumination comes from a single red safety light in the hallway. It leaves long, distorted shadows on the ground through the doorway.

Within the room is what had been the base to something, now just a stump with several severed wires sticking out of the top. Rust rings lie where the decaying metal touches the concrete floor. Next to it is a podium built into the ground with a control panel on top. The screen is cracked, shattered beyond repair, and it's missing several of its keys. Shards of glass and plastic litter the surrounding floor.

Hidden behind the broken machinery is a stack of standard sprial-bound notebooks. Their conditions range from merely beat-up to water damaged and ragged. Another notebook lies to the side of the pile, open, revealing a single page mostly covered in dense, dark writing. About three quarters of the page is taken up by a combination of Roman and Cyrillic letters as well as Arabic numerals. The writing shifts between each alphabet at random intervals. Most of it is blocky print, but there are segments in shaky cursive interspersed throughout.

"swear if I have to do one more," is one of them.

"I miss you. I miss you. I miss," is another.

Yet another reads "Barnes, James B., 03-10-16, killed in action."

A cheap ballpoint pen lies idle at the foot of the page, uncapped, a dent in the plastic near its grip and its end chewed into an uneven, flattened nub.

The room is silent except for the sounds of shallow breathing and the horrible grind of plates of metal, frozen together, moving across one another. The air is cool and stale, undisturbed; the emergency light does not reveal even a single mote of dust.

Footsteps in the adjacent room end the calm, heavy and angry, before shattering glass breaks the air. Ragged panting follows. There's a roar of frustration and then an abrupt, hard thud as something heavy cracks the concrete. An object—a chair—slams into the wall separating the two rooms. Its fragments clatter as they hit the ground. Then, silence reigns once more.

It's so quiet that it would be easy to mistake rhythmic thudding, quiet sobs, and dry heaves as mere hallucinations.

Steve opens his eyes to find he's not alone in his bed.

There is a cold, familiar figure pressed against his side. For a moment, he almost believes he's back in Brooklyn, before the war, in the apartment he shared with Bucky. That all of the events playing through his mind are just dreams. They certainly seem wild enough. Steve's no superhero, and the idea of imbuimg someone with the energy of a far-distant star sounds ludicrous.

Then he feels the chill edge of the knife against his throat.

Steve freezes, tense, and pretends he's still asleep for as long as he can. Then there's icy breath on his ear, and a familiar voice warped by time reaches him.

"Found you."

He rolls out of bed, falling hard on the floor, and feels blood trickle down his neck from a shallow cut. The room is dark enough that the white-blue glow his skin emits leaves a fuzzy aura against everything he touches. Steve manages to crawl out of the way before a pair of boots lands heavily where his chest had just been. Blood roars in his ears, the pressure giving him vertigo even though he's laying down.

One of the boots steps closer to him, its side scraping against his cheek. Steve looks up, past the rough legs, and his eyes meet their starless counterparts. Even if he could show emotion in those dark voids, Bucky's eyes remain empty. He furrows his brow and drops to the floor, elbow and knife aimed directly at Steve's chest.

Steve rolls out of the way and tries to get up, stopped only by a cold grip pulling at his shirt. It's cold enough that the sweat his shirt wicked up turns to ice. Steve shivers and tries to pull away, only succeeding in ripping his shirt and running into the wall. Before he can try to get to his feet, there's a body standing in front of him, heavy boots pressed into his chest. Bucky pins him against the wall.

Then, he kicks Steve hard in the chest, making Steve sputter and cough up blood. The droplets spatter on the smooth wood floor, glowing faintly. Bucky kneels down and, with a gloved hand, wipes them up. He regards the faintly golden smears on his finger tips, stark against the black leather of his glove.

"There are people who would kill for this."

He puts the two affected fingers in his mouth. His eyes flash, pulling in more light than before. It feels like Steve's very being is being sucked into them. Bucky pins Steve's shoulder against the wall behind him with one hand, while he pulls a knife from his belt with the other. He puts the blade back to Steve's throat, at a slight angle just above his collarbones. His knuckles push Steve's chin up, revealing more of his throat. Bucky goes in for the kill.

Or not? He first leans all the way down until his nose brushes Steve's jaw and his icy breath numbs Steve's neck. Steve stiffens, heart in his throat. Bucky's lips skirt against Steve's pulse. The weight above Steve shifts as, without moving the knife, Bucky gently kisses Steve's neck, his lips cold and chapped but soft.

Steve breathes hard and fast, not sure how to react. What does this mean? It's a touch he's craved for decades; a deep wanting hidden behind an unspoken barrier of caught breaths and almost-touching hands and shifting lingering gazes. He thinks of the sketch he'd so carefully hidden, the way the illusory light traces the curves of Bucky's body; he thinks of the weight of dusky hazel eyes that never leave his face while he makes conversation with a less-than-impressed girl; he thinks of the blush that would cover his cheeks when an accidental touch was everything he ever wanted; he thinks of tearstained letters and shaking hands and terrible amounts of pain.

Bucky kisses his jaw, and then the corner of his mouth and Steve hazily realizes he's no longer pinned to the wall. The hand that had held a knife to his throat carresses his cheek. He raises a hand to the one on his face, covering it, closing his eyes to savor the moment. Under his hand, he can feel the rough leather and, beneath that, cold, hard metal. Steve angles his head just-so and he's suddenly actually kissing Bucky, who is solid and cool against him and reciprocating. It's everything Steve expected and, at the same time, nothing like it at all. Every part of him is alive, like he can feel the blood running through his veins.

Steve is all lit up and yet he doesn't hurt at first. He registers something digging into his neck again, but doesn't realize what it is until he tries to breathe and inhales blood. Bucky's walking away, bloody knife still in his hand and an unreadable expression on his face. His black hole eyes stare vacantly through Steve, neither acknowledging the man he kissed nor the pool of shimmering blood spreading beneath his feet.

Steve didn't know he can bleed this much. The world becomes fuzzy at the edges, his eyes unfocused on Bucky's unfeeling face. He would cry if he could, but all he can summon is a faint, wet cough that's almost a "Bucky."

But the Winter Soldier turns away. The last thing Steve sees before everything goes black is a figure climbing onto his windowsill and jumping from it.

Steve wakes up alone this time, panting as though he'd been held underwater, a hand immediately flying to his throat. His fingers rub over and over unblemished skin, feeling for a wound that isn't there. A stabbing ache blooms in his gut and he curls around it, holding a white-hot ball of pain. Tears flow from his eyes unbidden. The smell of blood, of metal, of the first snowfall of a winter lingers in his nose. He shivers, even beneath his blankets, and coughs so hard he worries he might dislocate a rib. Every inch of his soul hurts.

Steve lays like that, in a frantic fetal position, until the shakes and the sobs dissipate. He slowly uncurls his body, laying out very carefully on his back. His hands find his solar plexus and rest on his stomach over it. Deep breath in, one, two, three, four, five, deep breath out. In and out. He focuses on the flex of his diaphragm as it draws in and pushes out air. His shoulders remain tense, a straight line, the little hairs on his neck raised like there's something behind him. But there isn't.

He doesn't know when or how, but eventually, Steve falls asleep once more.

Sam treats it like a mission. "There are hints he might be hiding here, sometimes. Neighboring units report unusual sounds at night from beneath the ground floor. Maintenance has received several requests to investigate the water heaters and washing machines in the basement, but no unusual activity has been documented."

"So what, he's a ghost?" Steve asks, growing more tense and annoyed by the minute. There's probably no chance Bucky is actually here.

"Actually, the building is owned by some shell corporation of SHIELD's. Classified documents refer to the address as a 'safehouse,' decommissioned as of April 2014."

"So... what? It was a HYDRA base?" Steve stares at his hands. "Why would Bucky go back there?"

"It's safe," Sam theorizes, "it's familiar."

Steve doesn't look at him. "So Captain America and Falcon are doing official Avengers work and investigating some faulty plumbing."

"No," Sam corrects with a hint of a grim smile. "Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson are doing a little sewer spelunking."

Sam holds up a hand to stop Steve as he comes to a maintenance door. It must be the thirtieth they've seen since descending into the sewers. Steve stops and watches as Sam puts a key in the keyhole and turn it.

A panel on the door beneath its designation slides up, revealing a pair of screens. Sam pulls two pieces of paper from his pocket and puts each of them against a screen. There's a pause before the screens light up green. With a pneumatic hiss, the door opens.

"Do I want to know how you know that?" Steve asks.

"Tasha," Sam says as though that explains everything.

"Ah," says Steve, because it does.

They enter the dark hall beyond the door. As it closes, darkness envelops them. In the pitch black, Steve's skin emits a vivid blue-silver aura. His irises glow enough to illuminate some of his face. In front of him, Sam slides on the night vision visor he snuck from Tony. Halfway down the hall, past a handful of doors, is a sole red emergency light. It reveals hardly anything. Just beyond the light is a larger opening, a decently-sized room that feels barren. Steve looks around, eyes bouncing from wall to wall.

"I don't think he's here," Sam says after a moment.

Steve is about to speak, but the opening click of one of the doors in the hall echoes through the space. He turns on his heel, looking into the darkness. Something moves in the shadows beyond the safety bulb. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but Steve can almost recognize the figure.

"Bucky?" he tries.

The shape in the hall flinches, then turns toward Steve. It walks a couple of steps closer to the light. Torn clothing confirms Steve's suspicions, though shadows cling stubbornly to its face, even with the piercing red light around it. He can make out the curve of a cheek, the bridge of a nose. Steve dares to take another few steps down the hallway, until there are fewer than ten feet between himself and the figure. It comes closer, within arms' reach of Steve, and the light reveals a familiar face.

"Bucky—" Steve begins, reaching out.

A flash of recognition crosses Bucky's features, followed by a flash of guilt, and then something else Steve can't place. His entire body tenses like a coil and, with the expression of a scared animal, he turns and runs down the hall and away from Steve.

"Bucky!"

Steve runs, ignoring whatever Sam shouts behind his back. All he can hear is the pulsing rhythm of his own heart. He turns left through a doorway and catches sight of Bucky's heels turning another corner. The underground base turns into nothing but a labyrinth as Steve chases Bucky through the darkness and silence. He passes through room after room of overturned desks, piles of paperwork, and broken electronics. Here and there, he spots fist-sized holes in the windows.

Before he knows it, his immediate surroundings are again bathed in an eerie red glow. Bucky stands, a silhouette not facing Steve, darkness sticking to his skin, his breathing ragged. Past him is Sam in the doorway, his features awash in bloody light, eyes focused on the man in front of him. Steve only now notices what looks like a knife in Bucky's right hand.

"You don't have to do this," he tries to say, only for his voice to die in his throat. Steve isn't sure the shadow in front of him is Bucky. Its posture is that of a broken marionette at rest. Its shoulders tense and its arms splay out almost unnaturally.

Steve's body moves faster than his mind as Bucky—or maybe the Winter Soldier?—coils and lunges at Sam. He puts himself between the two, hands on Bucky's shoulders, using their combined momentum to swing Bucky around. As Bucky falls, he inverts his knife with a quick hand movement and manages to stab it into the top of Steve's thigh. Steve flinches backwards, watching Bucky land hard on his back.

The Soldier flips into a less prone position, knelt like a beast of prey and looking at Steve without really seeing him. Steve's breath comes in hard, short gasps through his teeth.

A visible shift in the darkness around them accompanies the change from murderous to horrified. The grip on Bucky's strings slackens, his shoulders falling, and he gapes silently at Steve for a moment. He scrambles backwards, unable to break eye contact, until he manages to get shakily to his feet and disappear back into a dark hallway.

Slowly, so as to not worsen the wound, Steve stands. He looks into the darkness left in Bucky's wake and nurses his injured leg. Part of him wants to follow Bucky down this fucked-up rabbit hole. The rest of him feels— the rest of him doesn't know how to feel.

Steve startles as Sam puts a hand on his shoulder and gently turns him around. "We should go."

That night finds Steve back in the maze of rooms beyond the maintenance door. Darkness presses in on him, hungrily consuming his limbs until he can hardly see half a foot in front of himself. He stumbles through the darkness, hands thrust forward and reaching without sight. He keeps seeing glimpses of Bucky, always as he turns a corner, giving him just enough of an idea of where to go. The air chills as he crosses a threshold. His open palm runs into something solid—something almost warm. He grabs at it.

Suddenly, there's enough light to make out the silhouette in front of him and notice the steam he's breathing. Steve blinks, eyes adjusting to the darkness, focusing on the figure in front of him.

It's Bucky, Bucky as Steve remembered him, scarless and pristine, all mellow hazel eyes and a dark suit. Steve's breathless like he's falling in love all over again, like he's come across an impossible and disturbing sight. Bucky's eyes are glazed over, staring into nothingness. He can't—Steve can't help himself, he reaches out and touches Bucky's cheek. The smooth skin under his hand is lukewarm at best. Something feels terribly off about the whole thing, and it isn't the fact that the face before Steve is one long gone.

Bucky remains unmoving, still, but his shadow moves behind him. It takes Steve a moment to see the entire picture. There's a knife pressed to Bucky's neck, digging in very slightly. Dark fluid wells up beneath the blade. The shadow isn't an actual shadow, he realizes. Though shadows cling to the figure behind Bucky, it's unmistakably solid. A hand reaches out from the darkness and grabs Steve's wrist. It's cold. Steve's breath turns to clouds of steam in the air.

The Winter Soldier stands—no, looms behind Bucky, starless gaze locked to Steve's eyes. Ichor spills from the deepening slit in Bucky's neck, staining his skin and soaking into his shirt. It gushes like a waterfall. Steve tries to step back, make distance, but the room closes in on him and the Soldier's iron grip refuses to release his wrist. He looks everywhere but straight ahead. Dark, cold blood washes against his arm.

"Steve," Bucky and the Winter Soldier say in unison. Steve realizes they're both bleeding. Bucky's hand also clasps Steve's forearm. The twin founts of black blood waver as the world inverts around Steve. His hand is suddenly pressed against a sheet of ice and the faces staring at him ripple underwater.

Steve watches helpless as the Soldier and Bucky both succumb to the deep water under the ice. Bubbles escape from their mouths in a wordless cry. The twin images fade into each other until there is only one Bucky, scarred and sweet, sinking into the depths. Soon, all Steve can see in the ice is his own faint reflection.

Steve wakes again and decides he really shouldn't sleep.

Steve, rather unwillingly, finds himself on the infirmary floor of Avengers Tower.

He's the only one in rows and rows of beds in a clean white and stainless steel environment. It isn't an unfamiliar feeling, just one that makes his lungs tense and ache. Arrhythmic beeping surrounds him as various screens monitor his vital functions. His heart beats unevenly as he stares into the ceiling.

The nurse from earlier comes by, turning the lights off and briefly checking on Steve. They ask how his leg is doing. Steve can feel the tightness in his skin where the stitches are, the faint itch as his miraculous blood knits skin and muscle back together. By the morning, there shouldn't even be a sign Steve was ever injured. Part of him resents that. How dare his own body take away one of the only reminders of that encounter, the only proof it happened at all? Without the searing ache in his skin, the brief fight that lead to the injury feels more and more like one of his distant dreams.

He reassures them that he's okay, no, nothing hurts, he doesn't need anything. For once in his life, he's left alone in a hospital bed. The shadow-painted white walls seem to stretch on forever. Steve's eyes unfocus on them, losing detail. The white overtakes him and he falls asleep.

Steve is woken by a weight at the foot of the bed. He didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep. The familiarity of being in a hospital surrounds him until he can almost hear the rise and fall of his mother's voice. He breathes slowly until finally looking up at his visitor.

Unsurprisingly, it's Bucky.

Like it's just another trip to the hospital, like everything is normal, like they really were born twenty-some rather than ninety-some years ago. Steve coughs, chest hurting, and blinks back tears of pain because it really isn't a big deal. He smiles at Bucky and receives an unsure up-turn of the lips in response. The silence hangs between them for a long moment before Bucky furtively glances around. Assured that nobody is watching, he moves up the bed so he's closer to Steve, close enough to touch. He takes Steve's hand and holds it tightly, but not in a restraining grip.

"I missed you," he says, voice shaking.

Steve's heart almost explodes from the warmth building inside of him. There's so much he wants to say. So many things he shouldn't do but wants to before he dies. He opens, then closes his mouth. A million sentences run through his head. His body aches and he finds himself sinking further into the pillows supporting him. His chest burns, but doesn't bloom. He's weak, cold, shivering under the neat lines of incandescent bulbs overhead. It doesn't look good; he may always live on the edge of death, but this one might take him too far to recover. Steve resolves himself to say three words that are the closest thing he has to a way to explain what Bucky is to him.

"I missed you," Bucky echoes before Steve gets a chance to speak.

A new kind of pain, also like fire but similar to a knife, comes to life on his arm. Steve squirms under the sheets, feeling a creeping itch under his skin. His upper arm is wrapped heavily in bandages that cover where the bullet grazed him. He looks at Bucky, who's just staring at the wound, face entirely blank. Panic claws its way up Steve's throat.

"I missed you," Bucky says, one more time, his voice hard and bitter and unfamiliar. Steve doesn't even have a chance to scream.

Steve wakes up screaming, heart pounding, ready to snap like a tightly coiled spring. He's almost insensate to the hands around his arms, though he doesn't fight them, and only realizes anything is happening when the IV is slipped into the crook of his elbow. Steve looks at the tube, distantly, then at the bag on the stand beside him. It's filled with something murky and almost glittering that burns when it enters his veins. The liquid feels so heavy. He falls back on his pillow as his limbs turn to lead. His eyes shut and he's asleep before he knows it.

Indistinct but not unfamiliar voices rouse Steve. His bleary eyes register the plain ceiling above him, as well as two shadows cast over his bed.

Sam and Natasha stand at the foot of his bed. Tasha's arms are crossed over her chest and Sam lists things off on his fingers. Tasha scoffs and twists a lock of her hair around her finger. Sam demonstrates something with his hands, then scowls at whatever Natasha is saying.

"You're not," Steve says hoarsely, "my fucking parents."

They stare at him, and Steve just now notices the way his head throbs. His mouth is dry and almost fuzzy, his limbs stiff and sore. A large, ugly bruise surrounds the skin where the IV had been. The bruise's mottled pattern resembles a nebula and twinkles with constellations. His leg stings again, feeling no more healed than before, and his veins all burn.

The first thing Steve does once he props himself up on his elbow is lean over the side of the bed and vomit on the floor. Traces of shimmering red tinge the emptied contents of his stomach. He coughs violently into his uninjured elbow and tries to grab the glass of water on the table beside him. His hands shake and the cup seems to be moving closer and then further away as he reaches for it. There are two glasses of water now, and Steve futilely tries for either of them, but his hand never connects. Steve can do nothing else but lie back on his bed and stare at the ceiling in a nauseous haze.

"What the fuck," he asks.

Sam starts to explain it, but his voice is all mumbles in Steve's head and the smudging in his vision makes it impossible to read his lips. Tasha takes over to sign an explanation. Her hands are a blur to Steve.

They gave him the suppressant, Natasha explains.

"What the fuck," Steve echoes, with more emphasis on the fuck.

He woke up screaming, she says. It was the only way they could get him to be quiet. Ordinary sedatives wouldn't even impede someone like him, a starblood. It's been a work in progress since well before Steve was unfrozen, ever since the arc reactor inadvertently gave Tony starblood. It still hits like a truck. It should flush out of his system in a few hours.

Steve shivers under the blankets and just nods at Nat, the fight fading quickly from him. "Turn down the lights?" he requests when his eyes won't stop pulsing. Sam and Nat leave him alone after that, and Steve can't be certain, but it seems an awful lot like their indistinct words were getting more and more argumentative.

But it hurts to think. Steve opts to sleep instead.

Bucky is still there in his dream, face blank and peaceful, eyes staring up into Steve's face from where he lies in his coffin. Cold wind blows harshly over Steve's sensitive skin as they lower Bucky into the ground. He stands at the grave for a very long time. Long enough that—not for the first time—he might as well be one of the statues in the graveyard. He's still there when a metal hand reaches out of the soil.

Steve wakes up feeling... mostly normal. There's still dull throbs in his leg and elbow, and his head still feels a million miles away, but he's no longer bound to the bed by his own leadened limbs. Whatever's in the suppressant, it has one hell of a hangover. There's a taste in his mouth like old dust and shitty coffee. Steve sits up and manages to get to his cup for a sip of water.

That's when he notices Tony.

Sitting past the foot of his bed, backwards on a wheeling office chair, drumming his fingers on the top of the chairback. Steve's never seen Tony so ragged. Bruise-like shadows ring his eyes, his cheeks gaunt, a noticeable tremor in his off hand. He's in just a presumably fashionable pair of heather grey sweatpants and a worn Led Zeppelin shirt that Steve recognizes from the day Agent Coulson died. Aside from the obvious, there's something wrong with the picture—Steve just can't place it.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asks with a scowl.

Tony regards him tiredly. "I needed to see the results of the medical grade suppressant." His voice is just out of Steve's range, coming out as a low mumble. A transparent panel lowers from the ceiling and captions Tony in real-time, overlaid like movie subtitles.

"Do you actually use that shit for sleeping pills?"

Tony shakes his head. "That? That's a very diluted form of this. This is supposed to be a tranquilizer."

Steve doesn't have time for this bullshit. "Try it on yourself, then."

Tony's face is stony blank. "I can't."

"The hell you can't—" Steve starts, before he puts the pieces together. "Where's your Arc Reactor?"

"Ding ding ding," Tony says flatly, aiming finger guns at Steve. "It's out." Steve's gaze falls to Tony's chest. "My eyes are up here, bud."

"What? Why? What about your heart? What about Ir—"

Tony holds up a hand. "Surgery," he says. "Got that lousy piece of shrapnel taken out." He makes a face. "I'm not doing that anymore. It was Pepper's idea. She and Rhodey decided he could be my stand-in if you really need it."

Steve blinks. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really." Tony stands and backs off from the chair.

"How does it— y'know— what, what's it like?" Steve's seen the reports, the results in other shots at the Winter Soldier program. Starblood's an unsustainable high if you don't get it constantly. Even then, nobody lasted more than three months before eventual organ failure from overtaxing their systems. The only thing that worked, short of reverse engineering the serum in the first place, was tampering with stem cells, and that's. Well. That's Natasha.

"It's like hell," Tony says, defeated. "It's like..." He closes his eyes and sucks in a pained breath "It's like trying to live without a heart."

"Are you—"

"I'll be fine, Captain Tightpants. Turns out doing that was going to give me a heart attack sooner or later anyway." A diagram of Tony's internals appeared on the screen, showing his heart pumping in real-time. His pulse is, if anything, a little below normal.

"Jesus," Steve says anyway. "Well, you look like shit."

Tony turns and starts to walk away. "Thanks, Cap." He's almost at the infirmary doors before Steve realizes something. His own heartrate spikes.

"What's the suppressant even for, anyway?" An emergency? Bruce? A Bruce emergency?

Almost like he can read Steve's mind, Tony says, "Well, it sure as hell ain't for Bruce." He doesn't turn to face Steve at all, instead just casually walking out of the room.

The world spins around Steve. "Bucky," he whispers.

Steve, the wound in his thigh burning, wearing just a thin undershirt and hospital scrubs, pulls himself out of bed and toward the double doors. He's yanked back by the array of cords attached to his body. He doesn't have time for this, goddamnit! He pulls them off, one at a time, welts appearing on his skin where electrodes had been stuck and neat little beads of stardust blood well up where he pulls out needles. A sudden rush of adrenaline clears his head and pulls his senses back from the lingering hangover from the suppressant.

Sam comes through the doors just in time to see Steve attempt to leave early. He's at Steve's side immediately, firmly pulling him back toward his assigned bed. "Steve," he says, "Steve, what the hell are you doing?"

Nausea and waves of dizziness crash over Steve, making his legs weak. His wound stings and burns. Even his chest hurts. "Tony— h-he's going to use it—"

Sam all but wrestles him into sitting down. "Breathe." Steve closes his eyes and obeys, still agitated, his shoulders up to his jaw. After a few moments of silence, he looks at Sam. "What's wrong?"

"The suppressant. He's going to use it on Bucky," Steve says. "He can't— he shouldn't, he doesn't understand—" His heart rate picks up again and his hands fidget in his lap. "I can't let him. He doesn't— he's not—"

"Remember, as far as Tony knows," says Sam, "this is the man who killed his parents."

"But it wasn't!"

"I know. But if Tony admits that, then he's helpless. He thinks he can get revenge for something far outside his control this way."

Steve rocks forward on the edge of the bed. "I need to warn him."

"Bucky can take care of himself, Steve," Nat says, walking into the room. She sits on the other side of Steve, keeping her distance.

"And there's not even a guarantee he's even there anymore," Sam adds.

Natasha nods. "He knows it's compromised. He'll be long gone by the time Tony and his goon squad get there."

Steve laughs despite himself at the "goon squad" comment.

"And besides," she continues, "he's better off with Tony than any of the other folks that have it out there for him."

He can't bring himself to say it, but Steve knows that's true. At least with Tony, that means Bucky would be under "secret director" Fury's purview, and Fury's seen the same things Steve did. The other comfort he can take is that Tony will be comparatively unarmed. Unless he'd done some major work recently, more recently than he'd meant, the Iron Man suit wouldn't work for him without the reactor. And if Bucky didn't fight... maybe they could apprehend him without hurting him? Steve leans forward, elbows on his thighs, and puts his face in his hands.

"I won't be able to see him without Tony having a shitfit though." Steve looks back at Sam and grimaces.

"I know you're not exactly close, but he doesn't hate you, does he?"

Steve doesn't answer.

"What did you do?" Sam asks sternly.

"I fucked up is what I did." Steve's hands shake. "I said— fuck, I was an idiot. He was talking about his parents' death and blaming Bucky, and I said something really stupid."

"Steve," Sam says, deadly serious, "what did you say?"

"I said he's just like Howard," Steve mumbles.

"Y'know, your ability to make decisions quickly is good in fights," Sam tells him, "but it's a really shitty skill when you don't think before you speak."

"Really, Sam? Thanks for letting me know. I had no idea," Steve deadpans, frantically tapping on his knee.

Sam holds his hands up. "You should apologize."

Steve groans and looks at the floor again. "I know, it's just..." It's hard to put the feeling in words. "He called Bucky my boyfriend in this tone—"

"Wait a sec." Steve looks up. "He called him your boyfriend?"

"Yeah," says Steve, a hard and bitter edge to his voice. "Like we're lovers or something, I don't know." He puts up the walls around his heart.

"Steve, what exactly is Bucky to you?"

"He's my friend," Steve answers immediately. "And my... my friend," he adds, more weakly. "I need Tony to accept an apology and I don't think he's in the mood for that."

"Don't change the subject. It makes sense that you have trouble talking about your feelings f— in regard to Bucky. I have no idea what it was like then, it can be hard enough being bisexual these days—"

"You're bi?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Sam asks. "Shit. I meant to." He rubs the back of his head in embarrassment.

Steve chuckles nervously. "If it helps, um, I..." His voice drops to a whisper. "I kind of am, too."

Sam and Steve both laugh under their breaths, the tension in the room diffusing. The suppressant is mostly out of Steve's system; the pain from his wound is replaced with the itch of his blood pulling his skin back together. The sensation lessens to a hot, dull throb beneath his skin. His heart feels like it might beat out of his chest. It's like the serum all over again, the headrush of immense warmth and the feeling of distant stars curling their fingers into Steve's muscles. He can physically feel why people doped up on starblood eventually die of exhaustion. As his body moves back toward equilibrium, Steve remembers why he's here.

"What if Tony does get to Bucky?" he asks.

"Then we check in on him as soon as he's here," Sam replies calmly. "Is there anything you can do about this in the next hour?"

Steve considers, thinking of all the things he could say to Tony. He could apologize, and at least get that off his conscience. But an apology from Steve—hell, even an apology from Bucky wouldn't lessen Tony's rage. On one hand, it's perfectly reasonable: Steve remembers his anger at the world when his mom died, and she died of natural causes. On the other hand, with Steve consciously trying to stay unbiased, it wasn't really Bucky who did that, was it? It was the Winter Soldier who killed Tony's parents, HYDRA acting through Bucky, like all those goddamn Nazis using his body like a meatsuit. Steve scowls as he remembers the face Tony made calling Bucky his "boyfriend." It's the face of someone who knows what they're about to say is hurtful and they intend it to be that way.

"No," he admits, looking at Sam with a dour expression. "I don't know if there's anything I can do about it, period."

"Then it's out of your control," Sam replies. "You can't control how other people feel, no matter how hard you try. Tony's basically a good guy, he'll come around eventually."

"Eventually, huh?" Steve asks, looking into the distance instead of at Sam's face, mentally checking out of the conversation. "I hope eventually is sooner rather than later."

Sam searches Steve's face for something, but he doesn't seem to indicate whether he finds it or not. "You really love him." It's a statement, a fact.

"You have no idea," Steve admits.

They discharge Steve from the infirmary a little before noon, and he doesn't waste time leaving the imposing Avengers Tower. He reluctantly accepts the offered ride back to his own apartment; he needs time to think and besides, he still gets the shivers boarding a plane. Some things never change, really.

He also asked for something not ostentatious, and, in typical Tony Stark fashion, less ostentatious means still pretty noticeable. At least it's a far cry from the custom red Lamborghini Tony usually drives, or the dazzling white stretch limousine that usually chauffeurs him. The car offered is a sleek, long—but not stretch—black town car with heavily tinted windows. Steve appreciates the legroom. Its interior is all plush black velveteen. A flat screen takes up most of the wall separating the driver's seat from the cab, its remote installed by the cupholders. It has internet access, Steve discovers when he idly taps a few buttons on the remote. It also has a "DND - Sexy Music" setting, which makes Steve roll his eyes. Tony would put a hot tub on a jet plane if he could. At least, Steve thinks, savoring a bitter sense of irony, Howard was a helluva lot classier when it came to showing off.

Steve stares into the upholstery, barely paying any attention to the scenery zipping past the heavily-tinted windows.

All of a sudden, he's back at his apartment, dragging his own sorry ass back to his lonely, empty room. Even after all this time, he's still not used to living alone. He falls on his bed and stares up at the ceiling. A shower's in immediate order. Is there laundry he has to do? Probably. Steve glances at his phone and realizes it's turned off; trying to turn it on tells him its battery is dead. He plugs it in on his neat (read: unused) desk and looks out to his front room.

Stiff and almost like a robot, Steve sets to his chores. The rote habit soothes his worries and stifles his thoughts. He even sweeps the kitchen until his back tightens up and starts to hurt, all but forcing him to sit down. No matter how hard he tries to think about literally anything else, his thoughts always come back to Bucky. The look on his face back at the abandoned lab. Steve's known Bucky his entire life and that was the first time he saw Bucky make that face. That... shattered look, full of guilt and sadness and realization, pain, maybe even something else.

Steve clenches his jaw. No. Even having talked to Sam about his feelings for Bucky, his insides are still a mess of tangled and confused emotions, or basic senses more primitive than emotions. It's a clash of values and what he's learned and more than a little culture shock. The first time he saw two men walking and holding hands in public, he was stunned into silence. He briefly entertains the thought that this is a blessing in disguise, that he's being given a chance to act on these desires without fear. But—no. Even if Bucky has anything other than platonic feelings for Steve, he didn't endure literal decades of torture so Steve could sleep with him.

Once he can stand and isn't wrapped up in that miserable reverie, Steve forces himself to shower. He catalogs every scar, every feature he hopes Bucky remembers. There was hardly anything they hadn't shared with each other; as far as Steve knows, the only secret between them was how he felt about Bucky. And it's not like they sought out each others' bodies, there's just so much you can ignore when you live with someone for almost ten years. Scalding water washes away the memory of gentle finger prints on his bare skin, the examining stares of every doctor this side of the Mississippi, the bruises—Steve recalls the arcs and dimples of Bucky's body, his silhouette before they made him all hard and metal. He can even almost feel Bucky's calloused fingers under his palms.

Once he's satisfied with his moping and cleanliness, Steve shuts off the water. He dries himself off and wraps the towel around his waist. The tips of his hair leave droplets on the floor, tracing his steps. It's about time he get a haircut. He ignores the stubble on his face because he just doesn't have the energy to deal with shaving at the moment. Steve pulls out clean clothing and parks himself on the edge of his bed as he starts to get dressed. He's only in his sweatpants when his phone buzzes on the bedside table.

He checks it and finds new texts from Sam, Nat, and Bruce.

Bruce: Where's Tony?

Steve doesn't know and doesn't care. He puts that text aside for now and checks Nat's—if she's texting him, it's probably important.

Nat: heard whats up

Steve: Good news or bad news?

Nat: :/

Steve: Don't tell me Tony did it

Nat: yes

Nat: he did

Steve: Fuck

Nat: on my way now. still at home?

Steve: Yes

Nat: see you in a few

Natasha is not a very good driver.

Correction: Natasha is an extremely good driver, but also an extremely illegal one. While she never even scrapes her modded black Corvette Stingray against others' cars, she plays fast and loose with the rules of the road. And speedy—like she's always in the middle of a James Bond car chase. She's lucky the police never see her. Steve isn't sure whether or not it's an abuse of her heightened abilities. Sam is less than pleased when they pick him up, but Natasha's backwards death glance was enough to shut him up. Steve knows Sam'll have words with her later.

Either way, it's no time at all before they're storming Avengers Tower, in all their regalia: Natasha in a grey cardigan over a loose tank top and yoga pants, Steve in blue jeans and an undershirt, and Sam in an old concert tee and grey sweatpants. Less impressive than anyone hearing that Black Widow, Captain America, and Falcon were on their way would imagine, but more than most of the Stark Tower's ground floor reception staff could ever expect.

The entrance is spacious past the revolving doors. Its entire front wall is made of heavily-tinted, very glossy glass. Natural light filters in from above the streets of New York City, accompanied by the clean, bright LEDs set in the floor. The first few feet past the door are white tile, spotless, that segues into sleek black carpet. The room is dotted with artfully angled squarish tables surrounded by black leather barstools. A pair of ornate glass elevators sit in the center back of the room, their shafts window cut-outs of the seamless tile walls. A few very well kept potted plants sit here and there. Every one of the personnel at the reception desk has a glowing Stark earpiece with a matching pair of sunglasses, their computer screens mounted in thin sheets of glass, the light keyboards in front of them pulsing gently.

The stringy, eagle-nosed young man behind the mahogany desk greets them, "And what can we at Stark Tower help you with?" A look—the near-recognition of the superheroes—flits across his face, but it's gone as soon as it came. Who'd expect the Avengers to come in through the front door?

"We're here to see Tony," Sam says.

"Mr. Stark?" he asks, tense on the edge of nervousness. "Ah— uh— do you have an appointment?"

"No," Natasha chips in.

"W-would you like to make one? I can put you through to one of his personal—"

"Here." Natasha digs something out of her coat pocket and passes it to the young man.

He reads over it, swallows, and glances at his computer. After a few seconds of frantic typing, he looks back toward the assembled half-group of Avengers. He doesn't really look at any of them; more or less, he looks through them. "Uh—"

The large elevator behind a bank of security desks opens and six SHIELD agents step out, none of them anyone the three Avengers recognize. In seconds, the agents surround Sam, Steve, and Nat and begin shuffling them back to the elevator. Sam catches one of them keying the number thirteen into the touchscreen panel to the right of the doors.

"Stark Tower doesn't have a thirteenth floor," he says, eyes narrowed.

Natasha gently elbows him. "Not a public-access one. It's the new SHIELD HQ access line."

"Be quiet," one of the agents, a sturdy-looking man about the same height as Sam, says, simultaneously signing it. They all zip their mouths.

The elevator moves swiftly upward, and even in its metal enclosure, a wave of vertigo washes over Steve. He closes his eyes and puts a hand over them. Nat's gaze bores into his shoulder and one of Sam's hands finds his and squeezes. Steve swallows his bile, but it does nothing to help his roiling stomach. The smooth ride jerks to a halt with a ding. With a pneumatic hiss, like out of Star Trek, the doors open to a plain room, almost unfinished, unbefitting of Stark Tower's sleek exterior. 25 or so feet across from the elevator is a second set of elevator doors, prefaced with what looks like a hi-tech metal detector.

The agents surrounding the three Avengers keep in tight formation as they escort—or roughly shove—the trio across the room. Natasha's entire face is tight, lips pressed together and eyes focused directly ahead of her. Sam's face is one of grim determination, a heroic light in his brown eyes. Steve's a mess. He feels like a kid on his first date. His arms lay pressed as tightly as possible to his body, his shoulders almost up to his ears, his steps terse. More than usual, he is hyperaware of the sensations around him. His entire head throbs.

The metal detector goes off in a series of rapid, high-pitched beeps as they pass through, but the guards pay no mind. One of them presses the sole, unlit button to the right of the doors. Immediately, there's another hiss of air and the doors open into an elevator identical to the first one. Again, Steve, Nat, and Sam are pushed through the threshold, back into the tight squeeze of the elevator. Steve's head is light and his chest is starting to tighten. The detector is still beeping, and the one sound covers his surroundings. If Natasha tries to call his name, he wouldn't hear her. All he sees is the rush of movement out of the corner of his eye as two agents sequester Nat away from her compatriots. Then the floor rushes up and they ascend several storeys to the new SHIELD headquarters.

The next room he sees is more familiar: posh black leather seats around square glass tables on dark brushed-aluminum legs, piles of magazines that look as though nobody has ever touched them, a reception desk that's little more than a sharp-edged, right-angled hunk of dark marble. Beneath his feet is white tile, so perfectly polished he can almost see his reflection. The walls are sparse; unadorned, made of horizontal strips of wood. The agents move them past blocky, uncomfortable-looking chairs with pristine white cushions set in black metal frames. There are no uneven ends, nothing jutting out, nothing circular—even the clock above the empty reception table is a black-and-white square, its face plain except for the numbers set in a typeface similar to large print books made to be easy to read.

The SHIELD operatives direct them down a hallway, past many frosted glass doors and sleek black walls. There is nothing except a room number inscribed on the marble plaques to the right of each door. Neat black carpeting lines the ground, featureless and clean. Everything about it all, every straight line and ninety-degree angle, makes Steve tick. It all smells very new, very fresh vinyl and superheated plastic, a careful veneer of modern professionalism and definitely an example of Tony rather than Howard Stark. Steve idly wonders if he's in a high-end doctor's office or SHIELD's headquarters.

There is a pair of large oaken doors at the end of the hallway. Steve isn't so distracted by discomfort that he misses Sam rolling and cracking his neck or the hard way Natasha swallows. The agents in front of Steve push the doors open, one holding each of them as their four compatriots lead Steve, Natasha, and Sam in. Beyond the doors is a somewhat familiar dusty circular rug emblazoned with the SHIELD crest, a dented and bruised wooden desk that is all sorts of at odds with its surroundings, a few mismatched chairs, and a potted plant offsetting a wastebasket to either side of the desk. Behind the desk is a more-or-less welcome face.

"Director Fury," the three Avengers say in unison. Except, Steve and Sam mostly ask it while Nat states it. The agents push them forward, the doors closing as the last two join their ranks.

The office is large enough, and seems larger still due to its sparse furnishings. To the right of Fury is a projection of a computer screen and keyboard. To the left, there's a tall ceramic mug also stamped with the SHIELD logo. Stacks of paper frame the entire desk. What's visible of Fury's chair is broad and black leather, still relatively new in appearance, with neat dark brown decorative stitching at the seams. Behind him is an entire wall of window, curved slightly outward, showing a spectacular view of the neighboring Manhattan skyline. The early summer afternoon clouds float atop an off-colored sky tinted by the mirrored glass. Somewhere in the distance, between the surrounding colossi, the Hudson sparkles under the high sun.

"Leave," Fury says, looking past Steve's shoulder, dismissing the agents. They file out and SHIELD's former director remains silent until after the doors to his office have echoed shut.

"Nice place," Sam comments absently.

"Rogers," Fury looks right at Steve. "I know why you're here." He looks first at Natasha, "Romanoff," then at Sam, "Wilson. Why are you here?"

"The same reason Steve is, sir," replies Natasha, though there's a nasty undercurrent to her words.

Sam just shrugs.

"Where is he?" asks Steve, voice quivering at the edge of a shout—or maybe a sob. "Where's Bu—"

"Barnes is in secure containment under SHIELD's custody until the UN picks him up for his trial." Fury looks coolly at Steve's eyes. "I am not negotiating on the terms of his release. That's not under my control."

"Bullshit!" Steve cries, eyes prickling. "You're the—"

"The former director of SHIELD." Fury shrugs, almost defeated. "There's nothing I can do except confirm that he is, at present, not in critical condition. The rest—"

"What did Tony do to him? Was he—"

Steve is cut off by Natasha this time. "He was taken into custody without a fight."

"He was— he what?"

Fury looks at Natasha, eyebrows raised. "Who cleared you to know that information, Agent Romanoff?"

"I did, sir," she responds. At all of 5'6", she seems to tower over Steve's 6'3".

Fury gives her a look halfway between ha-ha-very-funny and warm, glowing pride. His expression resolves to pissed again as he looks at Steve. "Look, I don't exactly think this is the right move, either," he says. "But this isn't under my jurisdiction anymore. It doesn't matter what Director Hill, Assistant Director Coulson, or I think. We are obligated to follow the orders of the UN."

"You didn't listen to them when they told you to nuke New York," Steve argues.

"Not all of us can build a reputation on defying orders, Captain Rogers."

"Am I just supposed to sit by and let these strangers—"

"You know as well as I do that this is a matter of national security."

"Him? National security?" Steve gapes like a fish in the air. He really doesn't know what to say. "I'm— he didn't want to do that, any of that, they made him—"

"The UN will keep that in mind when determining his sentence." Fury glances over at the glowing, floating green-blues of his computer screen. He taps his keyboard a few times and turns to face the screen fully, absorbed in whatever he's doing.

"You're just going to let Tony lock him up? Let— let him just waste away like that?" Steve has to discreetly dab tears from the corners of his eyes.

Fury sighs. "I'm not saying I agree with it, Cap." He scans whatever's on his screen, then sighs again, his shoulders slumping.

"Then you should do something about it," Steve urges.

"Tony's not going to be happy about this," Fury says, standing up and stretching. "But after what he did—"

"What?" Steve asks, his heart suddenly shuddering to a stop.

"He used the suppressant," Fury tells him, "even after Barnes refused to engage."

Steve's face slides between emotions—confusion, fear, surprise, anger, sadness—and finally settles on anger once again. His blond brow furrows deeply, creasing the smooth skin of his forehead. Hard steel glints in his eyes. His shoulders turn to rigid, solid points of his body. Even his fists curl inward, so his nails dig into his palms. "Take me," he says. "Now."

There is nothing but a chair in the middle of the cell. His right arm is cuffed to the back of the chair, his feet cuffed to its legs, and he's still bound to the chair around the chest and waist. He's twice as wan as when Steve saw him last, greasy strands of long, unkept dark hair falling in his face. His eyes are closed, lids dark, as his head lolls against his shoulder. A dirty, torn, long-sleeved red shirt lays limply on him, its top few buttons open and revealing his collarbones. It's hard to tell between what's bruises and what's dirt, what's scars and what's fresh wounds. Steve's heart breaks all over again to see him in this state.

Steve approaches the fence-embedded glass of the cell and rests his forehead against it. His eyes fall down Bucky's form over and over, drinking him in like it's the last time they might ever see each other. He raises a hand to the glass but barely taps it, fingers curling inward as he looks on helplessly. Bucky's breathing is erratic and his head and body occasionally spasm. The lines on Bucky's face are hard and deep, the anger in the way he fights the restraints frightening, but the pain and fear in the way he shrinks inward tug at Steve's heart.

"Bucky," he mumbles, because he can't help it.

Bruised eyes open slowly, blinking wearily. The darkness behind those lids never fails to startle Steve, especially not in that face. He glances at Steve, head lolling to the side, blinking a few times. Bucky's mouth opens and moves, but he can't make a sound. His brows draw together like storm clouds. He tries to speak again, and again, throwing his body into the motion. Still no words come out. Bucky thrashes weakly against the restraints, his chair rocking back and forth as he fights to break free. Nothing happens and he tires quickly, slumping in the restraints. He looks up at Steve again, flinches, and looks elsewhere.

It's nearly impossible to read those eyes, uniform and starless as they are, but Steve thinks he sees fear in Bucky's eyes, or at least in the lines of his face. And—

After all these years, it still is his face. Even where skin gives way to patches of night-sky blight, even where animal fear and killer instinct overwrite familiar creases, even where there's unfathomable void where eyes should be, it's still *Bucky* underneath all of the pain.

Steve taps on the window, startling at the sudden, reflexive jerk of Bucky's head. *I'm sorry*, he signs with surprisingly steady hands. *I'll get you out of here.*

If Bucky understands, he does not respond; then again, how could he?

The conference room stretches on forever, its only defining feature an impossibly long table, yawning like the mouth of something deep and dangerous. An anglerfish but of the most boring variety, lulling you into a false sense of banality before snapping shut and closing out the lights.

Or, Steve contemplates, the lack of sleep is getting to him.

Natasha sits to his left, her hand on his wrist. The skin contact is grounding, keeping him in the present, reminding him that he isn't alone. Reminding him that, despite their previous misgivings, Nat trusts his judgement enough to defend it—and so does Sam, even if he doesn't have the clearance to join this particular meeting.

A panel of seamless white wall depresses and slides aside, welcoming a small entourage into the conference room. Several security guards—SHIELD and otherwise—flank the handful of international agents. Leading the group is a woman whose face is all sharp, harsh lines. She wears a smart grey skirt suit, its seams crisp and its planes unwrinkled. A pair of tortoiseshell glasses perch on her nose, the fine grey lines of their chain hanging on either side of her face. She gives Steve a withering look with cold blue eyes, and he barely resists the urge to make a face back at her.

"Captain Rogers," she says, nodding curtly. She sits across from Steve. To her immediate left is a short, slender woman whose face is tight, but much less severe. "It's an honor to meet you, even under such dire circumstances."

"Nice to meet you, too...?" Steve trails off, waiting for a name.

"UN Representative Claire Navidson," says Director Hill as means of a greeting. "Welcome. Thank you for coming on such short notice."

Navidson's smile is as stiff as the rest of her. "Thank you for inviting me so promptly on this very urgent matter. I know some would rather wait until the last possible opportunity." She shakes her head, closing her eyes and sighing.

Director Hill takes her seat at the head of the table. To her left is a SHIELD agent Steve doesn't recognize. He's tall and slender, his suit crisp and his hair neat. Though he appears to be one of the younger high-ranked agents, maybe in his mid-thirties, lines on his face suggest someone who smiles easily and laughs frequently.

"Now all we need is the big guy," Natasha says, eyeing the representative. "Hopefully he's not too—"

"Late, I know, sorry." Tony doesn't sound very apologetic as he enters, dressed casually as ever in a Rolling Stones shirt, holding a tall plastic cup full of what looks like iced coffee. He's wearing sunglasses, which remain on his face as he sits opposite Director Hill. It still strikes Steve as somewhat uncanny that there's no gently pulsing light in Tony's chest. "Everyone here? Let's get this party started."

"Due to the international reach of James Barnes's actions, the United Nations has decided that his trial should be held on a global level," Representative Navidson begins. "While we acknowledge that SHIELD"—she nods toward Director Hill—"and, by extension, Stark Industries"—a nod for Tony—"are the only bodies equipped to detain a threat of Barnes's caliber, we maintain legal custody over him until his trial. That being said," Navidson continues, pulling a sheaf of folded papers from her inner jacket pocket and passing it to Director Hill to her left, "we have certain requirements as to the specifics of his containment."

Hill unfolds the papers and scans them. "While I believe we can update our current accommodations to fit most of your standards, Mr. Stark should weigh in on the plausibility of certain requests." Navidson arches a sharp brow. "Particularly the requirement of constant sedation, given Barnes's metahuman status."

Tony doesn't even have a chance to respond before Steve speaks up. "*Constant sedation*? Are you fucking kidding me?" Everyone who isn't Natasha, Sam, or Tony flinches at the harsh language. "You can't just— just keep him on ice until you need him! He's not going to— he doesn't want to hurt anybody."

"Captain Rogers, these requirements are as much for his own safety as they are for others'." He refuses to submit to Navidson's harsh glare.

"If I may interject," says the agent sitting beside Director Hill, "Captain Rogers is correct. Based on behavioral analysis, Barnes is not liable to harm anyone unless he perceives a threat. Constant sedation may do more harm than good, particularly if he mistakes his surroundings for less friendly ones when awakening."

Tony clears his throat. "Also, we kind of don't have a way to constantly sedate anyone of his, uh, constitution."

"Really?" Navidson sounds skeptical. "Director Hill informed me that your experimental suppressant proved useful in extraction."

"Yeah, it's a *suppressant*, not a sedative," Tony reiterates. "It literally disrupts his biological function on a cellular level. Prolonged use could lead to anything from rejection of altered tissue to *death*. It's not meant for that."

Steve opens his mouth to say "you don't want him to die?" but Natasha squeezes his wrist and stops him.

Navidson narrows her eyes, lips pursed. She looks toward the nervous woman in glasses sitting beside her. "Dr. Acker, in your *expert* opinion, is sedation necessary?"

"No, ma'am," Dr. Acker replies. "Um, I believe that Agent Latour is correct. Sedation may make the situation worse." She inclines her head toward the agent next to Director Hill.

The sharp lines of the representative's face do nothing to disguise her displeasure. Navidson looks at Tony, and then at the director. "Can you guarantee that Barnes will have no access to civilians or any means of contact with HYDRA?"

"Ms. Navidson," Tony says, hands raised in a motion of placation. "More than ninety percent of Avengers Tower is inaccessible to the public. It is also a guaranteed Nazi-free zone. Per-room AI surveillance means that the moment a threat is detected, security will be on it. Director Hill can back me up on the efficacy of our security protocol."

Director Hill nods. "Mr. Stark is correct. Avengers Tower employs security systems as effective as the Pentagon, if not more. Even if Barnes were to escape containment, it is incredibly unlikely he would get much further."

Navidson's lips are such a tight, narrow line that it's almost like her face is succumbing to a black hole behind her teeth. "Fine," she says stiffly. "So long as SHIELD and Avengers Tower can fulfill the other requirements of the terms, Barnes can be held here until his trial." She jerks her chin at Dr. Acker and stands. "Director Hill, Mr. Stark." She nods toward them. "An honor to meet you, Captain Rogers." Her eyes studiously avoid his. With nothing left to say, Navidson turns on her heel and exits, followed by her guard detail.

Tension drains from Steve's body and he slumps forward. He remains unaware of how hot he's running until Sam tries to squeeze his shoulder, only to flinch back as though burnt. The air in the conference room goes cold, stale, and still. Further down the table, Director Hill speaks with the unfamiliar agent, their conversation distant and quiet enough that Steve can't make it out.

Nearer by, Tony sighs and leans back in his chair. He picks up the tall, clear plastic cup of ice and coffee and presses it to his forehead. Steve eyes him with no little disdain. When Tony notices the look on Steve's face, he grimaces, but sits up anyway. He turns his chair toward Steve.

"Sorry about the, uh," Tony begins, unpracticed hands clumsily signing alongside his voice, "'boyfriend' crack. That was... that was unfair."

Steve dips his head. "And I'm sorry for what I said. For the record, you are a much different man than Howard." He half-smiles. "He was a hell of a lot classier." Tony almost chuckles. "But, y'know, he was never one for apologies."

"I still think you're an idiot," Tony deadpans. "I think it's fucking ridiculous that, friend or not, you're taking the side of a mass murderer— who murdered your good friend Howard, by the way— over your teammate, but, hey." He shrugs before standing. "Nothing I can do about that, I guess." He leaves, Steve gaping after him.

"Ignore him," Natasha says and signs. "He's not worth the energy."

Steve is about to fire back when he sees the agent who had been talking with Director Hill approach. The agent offers Steve a hand, which he accepts warily.

"Sorry for not introducing myself sooner," the agent says. "I'm Jacob Latour. It's an honor to meet you, Captain." Agent Latour's handshake is firm and brisk, but not impersonal. "I'm SHIELD's expert in, uh, all things Winter Soldier-related."

"You're Agent Latour, huh?" Tasha asks, one eyebrow quirked, halfway incredulous. "It's nice to meet you face-to-face."

Latour nods to Natasha. "It's nice to meet you, too, Agent Romanov."

"How do you know about Bucky?" Steve asks, eyeing the tall and slender agent.

"I was a double agent for some years," Latour says. "I worked in the armoury, close enough to some of the higher-ups that I worked with the— with him a few times." He shrugs. "Mostly routine maintenance, never anything important. But I know his baseline personality profile."

"So why go to bat for him?"

"Frankly, Captain Rogers, I believe it's inhumane to keep *anyone* in holding like this and deny him a chance at recovery."

"I understand the risks, trust me," Steve says. "Hell, I probably understand them better than almost anyone."

"I'm sure you understand the risks to yourself, Captain Rogers," Agent Latour replies, "but there are risks both inter- and intranational associated with your request."

Steve snorts. "What, like I'll break him out?"

"You are considered somewhat of a rogue element amongst your superiors, and your track record with regards to Barnes doesn't exactly show the most unbiased behavior."

No longer restrained, Bucky sits in the corner on a bench, leaning against the wall, hand in his lap and eyes closed, though he isn't asleep. There are still angry red marks around his wrist and above his elbow from the restraints, though any other signs are hidden by the casual sleeveless top and sweatpants he wears. The dark, grafted patches of his skin fade into the shadows, and the starless black overwriting his eyes when they open almost suggests that they're gone. His head turns toward the door and he sits up bolt-straight, muscles tense and jaw set. His chest aches and his heart picks up speed when the voice comes through.

"Bucky?"