Chapter Text
There are days when Bucky really wishes he was dead.
Not in a suicidal way. He’s never entertained those thoughts for very long, even though they still crop up from time to time. There’s too much to do to check out early. There’s that list of names for a start, undeserving victims and victors alike from his seventy years in HYDRA’s service. He’s been working through them, one by one, name by name, removing those he placed into undeserved power and bringing closure to those who agree to see him and hear him out. That second number is higher than he expected it to be. It’s hard, with no indication that it’ll get easier. He does it anyway.
There’s Steve, miraculously still fighting side-by-side with him decades after their disastrous last mission on that train. Steve, who had searched for Bucky relentlessly either directly or through Sam when Steve’s Avenging duties kept him homebound. Steve, who's confused “Bucky?” on that causeway had been the domino that had sent the others sprawling, who had caused the first crack in the HYDRA-shaped cage around his mind.
(One crack is all it takes, though.)
Now there are the Avengers, too; a rag-tag group of misfits the media only half-successfully sells as having their shit together. A team who had folded him into their ranks the second Wakanda had scrubbed away the last of HYDRA’s programming, and the Winter Soldier’s past with Tony’s parents had finally been put to rest. A force to rival the Commandos when it came to making him feel like both teammate and friend, once Bucky had gotten over himself enough to start socializing.
Those friends include Sam now too, even though Bucky would never admit that out loud. He has no doubt the pararescue would find a way to drag his ass back to life only to give it the beating of a lifetime if, after months of searching, Bucky did something as stupid as offing himself now that Steve finally has him back.
And then there’s Clint.
Clint Barton’s a pretty damn convincing reason to stick around on this plane of existence.
The two snipers had existed on the outskirts of the other’s attention for weeks as Bucky had slowly settled into the Tower, into team dinners and training and waking up from endless nightmares filled with the sound and stench of the dying. It went on for a month before Bucky started trying to hide the dreams, guilt growing every night he woke Steve up with him, but shoving them down only meant carrying the nightmares into the daylight hours.
The final straw came when Bucky woke with a shout from that dream, the one he hated more than all the others, and had to field Steve’s concerned questions the next day about why on earth Bucky had been having a nightmare about Brooklyn.
“Is that why you don’t want to go back?” Steve had asked. Raynor had been pushing for Bucky to revisit his old home, to find some continuity between his pre- and post-Soldier existence, but Bucky had refused.
“There’s nothing left there,” he’d given as a reason.
“How do you know if you haven’t been?” Raynor had countered.
Bucky had just glared at her. “Because I know.”
So he stopped sleeping altogether, trying to keep the nightmares at bay, insisting he was ready for his own bedroom long before both he and Steve knew he was. He’d dragged his duffle bag of belongings across the hall and locked the door, intent only on avoiding everyone’s concerned looks and worried words.
He was so done with people being worried about him. Done with Steve’s comfort and Sam’s advice and Dr. Raynor’s blunt call-outs. He’d sort it out himself. Eventually.
The team didn’t agree. After a week of self-imposed isolation, Steve stopped dropping by with food, with JARVIS primly informing Bucky that he would have to venture out into the common areas if he wanted to eat. Bucky responded to that by rising at ungodly hours to raid a kitchen he knew would be empty, alternating his timing so no one would catch him off guard. It worked for a fortnight or so. Until he crept into the common room at 2 am and found a blond-haired archer already rummaging through the fridge.
He almost turned on his heel and went right back to his room, but the look of surprise on Clint’s face belied Bucky's suspicions of an ambush. They stood frozen in the presence of the unexpected company, Bucky a second away from retreating when Clint said, “You up late or early?”
Something about the casualness of the question—an olive branch, not an interrogation—made Bucky put his lowered foot back down. “Both.”
Clint shrugged. “Yep,” he said, as though that made all the sense in the world. “Couldn’t sleep?”
The retort Bucky would have given Steve or Sam when posed with the same question died on his lips. Clint was still half-dressed in mission clothes, skin pale and eyes bloodshot with the same exhaustion Bucky had felt in his bones since Azzano. “Nope,” he admitted instead. “You?”
“Not much of a sleeper these days,” Clint mumbled back. “There’s leftover Thai in here that’s definitely not mine.” He drew the containers out, offering one to Bucky. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
He should have gone back to his room; should have taken the container and retreated. But there was something in the earnestness of the request that had him accepting the offering. “Only if that Thai food isn’t Natasha’s. If she gets mad, I’m selling you out, Barton.”
Clint snorted, lips twitching. “So it’s true. Out of you and Steve, you got all the survival instincts.”
“Steve has survival instincts. He just chooses not to use them.”
When he tries to remember that night now, Bucky can’t remember what they talked about. Or rather, what Clint talked about. Bucky had said barely five words in the hour or so they had sat together, choosing instead to let Clint’s prattle take the edge off the last round of nightmares. One of those five words had been, “Thanks,” though, and he remembers that he meant it. He remembers the way Clint had paused in his story, which had clearly had nothing to do with whatever mission had sent him into the Avengers’ kitchen instead of a lonely bedroom, holding that thanks with tentative caution before shrugging it off.
He remembers the next time they had a nightly kitchen run-in too. And the time after that. Never really talking about anything. Clint never pushing. Bucky returning the favor. Growing used to waking from the nightmares, not to another night alone, but to the promise of company without baggage or expectation.
Until it changed.
Bucky had surprised himself by being the one who asked first. “Why don’t you sleep?”
Clint froze over the congealed pizza that had been that night's pilfer, and something in Bucky went cold. He’d ruined it. They’d found a tiny oasis away from prying questions and teammates’ well-meaning but unwanted concern, someone safe, and Bucky had ruined it with four words he hadn’t even planned to say.
He was half a second from taking it back, to telling Clint to forget it, to try and return to that easy peace from before when Clint said, “Do you know about Loki?”
Bucky did. He’d read the files; had felt his insides twist at what a fellow sniper had been made to do against his will. Sixty-one people had died on the helicarrier that day. Clint had been forced to leave SHIELD shortly afterward; had been adrift until HYDRA's roots had been unearthed and the Avengers had reestablished themselves as an independent group with no government connections. Bucky didn’t say any of that though. Instead, he simply said, “Yes.”
Clint eyed him, searching. For accusation, for pity, for both. Bucky knew that look. He’d tried it out on everyone ever since Wakanda. Something like surprise crossed Clint’s face when he didn’t find either, dropping his gaze back to a drooping piece of pepperoni. “I’ve never felt that helpless,” he admitted to the pizza. “That weak. Doesn’t matter how many times people told me it wasn't my fault.” The last sentence came out as a bitter mantra. “That there was nothing I could have done to stop it.”
Bucky’s mouth went dry. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one.”
“I bet.” There was a shift of Clint’s chair, as though a part of him wanted to stand, to run. Bucky was right there with him. He stayed seated, though. “Everyone else was running around saving the world, and I was helping the bad guy destroy it. Not the most fun introduction to the team.”
Bucky swallowed back images of thrusting a knife at Steve’s head; of ripping a car wheel out of Sam’s hands. “No,” he agreed. “Not how I would have chosen to make new friends either.”
That got a laugh, which in turn made Bucky smile, some of the tension easing. He hadn’t ruined…whatever this was. If anything, some of the tension that had coiled in his stomach ever since moving into the Tower finally eased.
“I just…” Clint toyed with the pizza crust, crumbs spilling over the table. “Everyone kept going on about how it wasn’t my fault, but they don’t know—” He broke off, catching himself, before he repeated, “It wasn’t a great introduction to the team. Letting Loki get in my head like that.”
Bucky was sure that that wasn’t what Clint had been about to say, but he didn’t push. They didn’t push each other. It was their unspoken agreement, one Bucky had almost broken by starting this conversation. Almost, but not quite. The first step across a frozen lake, finally trusting the ice underneath them not to break.
It went quiet again then, both of them eating to avoid acknowledging the fact that they weren’t talking. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though. Bucky felt like he could sit here for hours, not talking. But he could already see Clint retreating into that nonchalance and sly humor Bucky had long since learned was a mask that could fool the best of interrogators. He didn’t want to sit here with a mask. Not when he’d gotten a glimpse of the real thing. Not when he was coming to realize that he liked the real thing.
“The weakest I ever felt with HYDRA…” The words came out croaky, and he had to clear his throat before he continued. A few more steps along that ice, leaving the safety of the shore behind. “It was never when I was the Soldier. The Soldier was all mission, no questions, no emotions or attachments to get in the way. Mostly. They had to start feeding me bullshit about my work being a gift to mankind by the end.” He coughed again, this time to stall. “But before that. When I was still kind of me…”
He stopped. Swallowed. Searched for the words. He had never told anyone about this, not even Steve. “I wasn’t doing what they wanted.” That was as good a place to start as any. “They’d tried…they’d tried a lot of stuff. And then one day, they bring out an empty tank.”
He was staring at the table, all too aware of Clint’s razor-sharp eyes watching him. He didn’t feel watched, though. Just…observed. He wasn’t quite sure why he was telling this story. But he knew that he’d been dreaming about it for weeks now, and that maybe, maybe, this was the place to finally voice it aloud.
“They chained me down in it,” he continued. “And they’d finish changing me physically, so I was strong, but not strong enough to get out. And they brought out this…this tubing. I was sure they were going to submerge me. Leave me underwater. But the tubing, it wasn't for breathing. It was for…” He cleared his throat again. He could almost smell it—the briny scents of the grubby white room the tank had been kept in, the thing barely bigger than a coffin. “Waste disposal,” he manages. “So they intended to keep me there for a while.”
“Jesus,” he heard Clint mutter, and tensed a little, trying to detect pity in the words. There was none. Just disgust, and not aimed at Bucky.
“Then they, um…” A breath; a reminder that he was sharing this freely. “Well, they did pour in water. But only a jug. One jug of water.”
That part he remembered vividly. The confusion and disbelief, then resigning himself to the discomfort of it—a tactic to keep him cold and damp, and frustrated that it had taken so little to do so.
“And I know it doesn’t sound so bad, just being a little wet. But then the next day, they added another jug. And another the next day. And they never said anything, didn’t ask for anything. Just let the water get a little higher and higher every day.”
He’d had a panic attack the first day it had crested over his fingertips. They hadn’t cared—just made sure he didn’t asphyxiate himself. Then the water began to rise over his ears, his wrists, his shoulders. No questions, no demands. Just the steady rising of water, day by day. Waiting to drown. Took them weeks to fill the whole thing. Maybe months. Bucky had stopped thinking about time in anything but water jugs by the end.
“They'd nearly finished,” Bucky whispered. “It was around my cheeks, and my forehead, and my chin, I couldn’t remember what it felt like to feel warm. And then they bring me a newspaper. I don't know if it was old or new, but they were waiting until I was at my wit’s end to bring it in. The paper that announced that Steve was dead. That no one was ever going to rescue me. Then they dumped the next jug of water in and it covered my mouth.”
His breath hitched, feeling more than seeing Clint shift in his chair, as though about to reach out and then thinking better of it. He hadn’t even been able to cry, hadn’t been able to scream from the unfairness of all, too afraid to part his lips and let that first sip of water in.
“They didn’t drown me,” Bucky finished, with an unnecessary gesture at his still breathing, obviously living body. “But it worked. Something cracked, upstairs. They made the first breach. After that, it was only a matter of time. They always knew I’d let them in, in the end. Let them in until I was willing to do anything, kill anyone. Even Steve.”
There was a long pause after that, before Clint said, “Well, damnit Barnes. No wonder you can’t sleep.”
Bucky let out a surprised laugh. “Just…what you said. About not having the greatest introduction to the team. I’m with you there.”
Clint ran a hand through his already mussed hair, considering him. “Look,” he said carefully. It initially made Bucky’s skin bristle, because he couldn’t stand people being careful with him, until he realized that Clint was doing the same thing he had been only minutes earlier—trying to preserve the pockets of peace they’d managed to find over leftover takeout. “You didn’t. Let them in. That’s…the things they did. I’ve seen the files.” He threw Bucky an apologetic look. “It’s amazing you held out as long as you did. Before they forced the Soldier on you.”
Bucky fixed him with a look. “I could have held out longer.” He’d never admitted that to anyone before. Didn’t want to hear from Steve or Sam that he was wrong. Because he wasn’t, he was right. He didn’t really want to hear it from Clint either. Because…
Because there was that other thing. That other nightmare. But if Clint could hold back secrets, so could he.
“Could have held out longer,” Clint repeated his words. “Could have tried to do less damage. Could have fought back harder.” There was no judgment in any of the statements. Just a bitter kind of acceptance. “For the record, I don’t think you could have. I don’t think anyone could have, and you held out longer than most would. But I understand the line of thinking.”
Something ignited in Bucky’s chest. Something warm. Something that had been missing. “I’ve read your files too,” he admitted. “About New York. About what happened here. About the scepter.” He saw Clint stifle a flinch, and hurried on. “And fucking aliens, because I guess that's something we deal with now. There was no way around it for you. It was magic. From another planet.” He caught himself then; he wasn’t about to force on Clint everything he hadn’t wanted to hear about himself. “But…I understand the line of thinking.”
The nighttime meetings had continued, eventually moving from kitchens to bedrooms. They talked. About HYDRA, about Loki, about the aftermath. And it was done with the promise that the admissions of guilt and shame wouldn’t be followed by phrases like “It wasn’t your fault" or "There was nothing you could have done", because that wasn’t what either of them needed to hear.
They didn’t talk about everything, though. Sometimes Clint would teeter on the edge of a final confession, the last secret, before always pulling himself back. Bucky couldn’t resent him for it. Not when he was holding onto the exact same thing.
“Fuck,” Bucky had breathed, the night Clint had opened up about what had happened to a SHIELD agent named Phil Coulson.
“Yeah,” Clint had mumbled, weary and exhausted. “I know.”
“I just…” Bucky searched for the words. “I don't know how you got through all of it, sometimes.”
Clint rolled on his side from where he was spread out on Bucky’s bed, eyes narrowed. They'd taken to talking on beds rather than in chairs lately. Bucky had refused to read into it. “All of it? It was two days. You had seventy years—”
“On and off. Not sure if the time in cryofreeze counts.” He shivered before he could stop himself. “It’s not as if I look a century old.”
“No, you definitely don’t.” There could have been an edge to the words, before Bucky put it down to wishful thinking, even as Clint’s finger jabbed close to his eye. “Although, I’m seeing a few wrinkles in there. Some gray hairs.”
Bucky batted him away, playful. “Get your eyes checked. Hawkeye, my ass.”
The movement drew a hiss out of Clint, even though Bucky had barely touched him. He sat bolt upright, alarmed. “What?”
“Nothing.”
But Bucky didn’t miss the way Clint was slightly cradling his drawing arm; the same arm he had landed on after he’d used a grappling arrow to try and catch himself after leaping off a HYDRA base that had been in the process of exploding.
There had been a few awful moments of silence over the comms after—the kind that had the entire team holding their breath, no one daring to say what they all feared out loud. The kind that had made Bucky’s heart pound a million miles a minute, sensing a loss on the horizon that he knew with a startling clarity would hurt, before there was a blur of red and gold on the scene and Tony was announcing that the Avengers’ archer was still breathing.
That had been a week ago, and Clint had been back in the field barely days later, declaring himself fit to fight. From the way Clint was holding his arm now, however, Bucky doubted that was the full truth. “I thought it wasn’t that bad.”
Clint’s face shuttered. “It’s not. Leave it.”
An old instinct flared, one that had been honed from years of pulling Steve out of street fights and trying to patch him up best he could before Sarah Rogers saw the bruising and blood. “You’re hurt.”
Bucky sensed the misstep even before Clint was pushing himself off the bed, going to snatch up his shoes. “It’s fine. I know my limits.”
He could feel that oasis they’d created slipping away like trying to hold water in his hands. “Can I see it?”
Clint paused, already halfway off the bed. “See what?”
That felt like a trap, so Bucky sidestepped it. “I won’t tell the team.”
“Won’t you?”
Bucky shrugged, trying to keep the gesture nonchalant. “You’ve never told them that I’m still having nightmares. Thank you for that, by the way.”
After another tense few seconds, Clint finally settled back on the bed. “That’s your business.” Hesitantly, he pulled down the collar of his shirt. “There’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it.”
Bucky leaned forward, sucking in a breath when he saw the mass of bruising staining Clint’s shoulder. “Are you treating this?”
“It’s healing,” Clint insisted, breaking off with a wince as Bucky took a closer look, pulling Clint’s sleeve down a little lower. “Nothing’s broken.”
“Could use a compression bandage though,” Bucky muttered. “What?” he added, at Clint’s slight scoff. “At some point, HYDRA realized it was smart to give their attack dog first aid training. Guess they got tired of patching me up themselves. Let me get stuff for it?”
Clint hesitated, Bucky holding his breath. Finally he nodded, giving in. “Fine. Just keep it…”
“Discreet. I got it.”
Minutes later, Bucky had returned with a purloined set of bandages and a comfrey-based cream. “Can I, um…I need to see all of it.”
Clint shrugged off his shirt, and this time Bucky managed to hold back his reaction to seeing the bruising in its full glory. The mass of black and purple streaked Clint’s shoulder blades in a macabre parody of his usual color scheme. Bucky started with the cream, bracing his metal hand against Clint’s back for balance as he worked. “So. You have a habit of leaping off buildings with nothing but a stick and a string?”
That earned him a laugh. “Unfortunately. Not all the landings are this rough. Having the building blow up on you adds a few complications though.”
“I bet.” Bucky continued to rub the cream into the bruising, and if he was being a little more thorough than he needed to be, no one had to know. “I thought…we all thought you died, for a few seconds anyway.”
“Nah,” Clint brushed it off. “Can’t kill me. Trust me, the universe has tried its best. Still here.”
A little reluctantly, Bucky moved onto the bandages. “Don’t get these wet,” he warned. “I can redo it whenever you need. Not like I’m doing much else these days.”
There was a long pause as Bucky worked, trying to be as gentle as he could. “Thanks,” Clint said finally. “For not saying anything.”
“It’s your business.” Bucky secured the last of the bandages in place. “Although…” He hesitated, before risking a few more steps out onto that frozen lake. “I’m sure they wouldn’t judge. The team.”
“It’s not…” Clint ran a hand through his hair, grimacing. “I know my limits,” he said again. “I know people think I don’t, but I do. I knew I’d clear that building, I know I can still fight with this.” He gestured to his shoulder. “I’m not weak, I—”
He broke off, that same haunted expression crossing his face every time they tip-toed towards that truth they both knew Clint was keeping back.
“The team doesn’t think you’re weak,” Bucky offered. “I…I don’t think you’re weak, Clint. Never have.”
Clint shot him a look, annoyed. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Try to make me feel better,” Clint snapped back. “Or…or whatever you’re doing. That’s not…”
What we do, Bucky finished in his head, even as he argued, “I’m not. I mean it. I see you in training, in the field, it’s…” He only just managed to cut himself off before the word hot slipped out. “Amazing, actually.”
Clint laughed, the sound wry. “That’s what they had on all the posters back at Carson's. The Amazing Hawkeye, in town for one night only.”
“Wish I could have seen that,” Bucky smirked. “Natasha assured me there were tights.”
“Hey, I pulled those tights off perfectly, thank you very much.”
“I bet.” The next words came out before he had even decided to say them. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Some of Clint’s defensiveness finally dropped. “In this Tower, or in your bed?”
They did more than talk that night.
The nightmares didn’t abate, but they came less frequently, and soon Bucky was eating meals with the team instead of in the witching hours of the morning. He managed to smile back at Steve; to gripe back at Sam. He managed to put some of Raynor’s advice to good use, even though he refused to tell her just how well animal-assisted therapy was working out. Alpine had refused to stay confined to Bucky’s room, although all the Avengers had taken to her enough that the feline soon had full run of the Tower without complaints from a single resident.
He and Clint continued to talk, even though Bucky could sense that they were still holding back that final confession from each other. But they didn’t push. That wasn’t what they did. And Bucky had spent the past few months tracking down the remnants of HYDRA and trying not to mess up the best thing he had been offered since joining the twenty-first century.
So Bucky has no plans to die. Just thoughts that it might be nice sometimes. On the days when he’s bone-tired, when shifting from the bed to the pair of pants that had ended up on Clint’s side of the room feels like a marathon. On the days when it’s still too much, when Clint or Steve or Sam give up their plans to sit with him until the dark mood passes. On the days he spends in Tony’s workshop with Shuri on a video call, because no matter how much work they pour into him, there always seems to be more to fix.
And on the days like this one. Days where he’s chained to the floor of a moldy HYDRA basement, shoulders already aching from the position his captors have forced him into. Of course the arrogant bastards put him on his knees, a collar around his throat that’s attached to a chain bolted to the floor. That’s where he belongs in their eyes. And apparently running away and spending every ounce of time he’s had over the past half-year obliterating their asses hasn't driven the message home that he’s done with their bullshit. He’s free. He’s his own person. He’s Bucky Barnes.
Which isn’t really doing him any favors right now. The Winter Soldier was a machine, to be programmed and pointed at the latest target, and then packed away into his box until the next mission. Bucky Barnes is a person, with thoughts, and memories, and feelings. And from the way the HYDRA assholes have got both Clint and Steve trussed up in his sightline, Bucky is betting that this demonstration isn’t for the Soldier. It’s for him.
Their latest intel had led them astray, which means someone fed them everything they needed to hear to come running into this trap. Bucky files that away for later, though he’s sure the team is already looking for the leak even as they search for them. Their captors have stripped them of what equipment they could find, even shucking their shoes and prying out Clint’s hearing aids. They haven’t been able to remove the metal arm, but there’s a heavy weight on it that Bucky can’t see, making it useless. All he can do is hope that whatever equipment HYDRA has left to their name isn’t going to trump Wakandan tracking technology.
There’s some comfort in that all three of them are here, breathing, even as Clint’s eyes are misted and lidded from the blow he took to the head. The Avengers had decided that he, Steve, and Clint would be enough of an attack force, overkill even, for what they had thought was an almost abandoned base. The three of them had snuck their way into the belly of the many-headed beast, scanning for intel more than enemies, not seeing the trap until it had already been sprung.
Bucky strains against his bonds, trying to maneuver himself into an angle where he can see the back of Clint’s head. Bucky’s fault. It had been a split-second mistake, the smallest lapse in judgment, but that had been enough. The blast had been ignited with Clint on his left and Steve on his right, and Bucky knows he should have gone for Clint, should have thrown himself at the archer and borne the brunt of that damage. It was the only move that would have given them all a fighting chance when the seemingly abandoned lab they had been searching was swarmed with agents and guns.
But some instincts can’t be wiped away in even the fanciest of Wakanda’s labs. There had been a blast, there had been danger, and Bucky had forgotten about Steve’s cowl and thick super-soldier skull. He'd ended up frozen between shielding his boyfriend and his best friend, unable to make the choice. So he'd done nothing, and had ended up sprawled in a corner tasting blood as a gun had been pressed to an unconscious Clint’s head.
Bucky’s already dreading the aftermath of this, even if they somehow manage to get through this unscathed, because he knows Clint is going to beat himself up about that for weeks. No matter how many times Bucky repeats what he had said that night in his bedroom, he’s never been able to pierce through that haze of self-doubt. Clint can’t stand being leverage, an attitude not helped by the fact that it's a position he ends up occupying more than most of the team.
Bucky’s not a fan of it himself—and there are countless people out there who know he’s the key to Steve’s cooperation who have tried it—but he at least trusts that he and Steve will work together to get each other out. For all his talents and skills, Clint’s faith in his position on the team wavers wildly from day to day, and having some asshole who thinks Clint is the weak point in the Avengers never ends up going well.
Bucky twists one more time in the restraints before slumping back, deciding to save his energy for greener pastures. They’d expected him, or Steve, or both, because these aren’t chains either of them are getting out of any time soon. Steve’s in the same position minus the collar, bound on his knees to Bucky’s right, still testing the multiple locks for weaknesses. The cowl and shield are long gone, blood from a wound that’s already healed drying across his uniform.
Clint’s on his left, strapped into a chair by thick ropes that are hitting every pressure point, giving the archer as little leverage as possible to try and slip free. There’s a wad of cloth yanked tight between his teeth that Clint prods every so often with his tongue, trying to shove it out, but either the knot is too secure or Clint is too concussed to have any success. They’d tried to gag Steve too, nearly every agent they’d seen so far holding him down in order to try. Steve’s always been a natural-born fighter, long before he’d been given the strength and lungs to match his spirit. Even when he’d lose the fights, he’d give the bullies of Brooklyn a run for their money, and most antagonists aren’t ready for Captain America to go absolutely feral on them.
After one agent had almost lost a finger, they’d changed tactics and had one of them belt Clint across the jaw. Clint had been conscious that time. Had seen Steve give in for his sake. Had woken already tied to the chair, taking in the situation, no doubt putting the pieces together of how a small sect of HYDRA had managed to get two super-soldiers tied down and compliant.
Yeah. There's definitely going to be fallout on the other side of this.
Steve had chewed through the cloth the second they were unobserved, working down the fibers until he could flex his jaw and create a tear in the fabric. Their captors had no doubt left them to stew in worry and anticipation, as though Bucky wouldn’t know that trick, as though he hadn’t used it a hundred times before during his own interrogations. Steve's gag had been spat out with distaste, prompting Clint to redouble his efforts to remove his own, only to slump back with a frustrated huff when he realized he was stuck.
“We’ll be okay,” Steve announces, placing him on the end of a filthy look from Clint, who has refocused his attention to trying to slip his wrists free. So far, he’s only succeeding in giving himself rope burn. “We’ll get out of this.”
Clint makes two muffled noises that are still unmistakably fuck off, and Bucky feels his lips twitch despite himself. “We’ll fuck them up,” Steve tries instead, and is rewarded by Clint’s teeth baring around the gag in something like a grin.
Bucky transfers his gaze to Steve, who’s watching him right back, wary. Steve’s policy on killing isn’t as strict as most of the press likes to believe, especially when they’re backed into a corner like this. He still does it cleanly, humanely, even when it’s HYDRA. That's never wavered. After seeing the bruise blossom over Clint’s cheek, Bucky’s not feeling so generous.
They should be using the time to plan, except there are no plans to make, and Bucky is too sure they’re being listened to to dare voice ideas about the rescue that is surely coming. Steve’s on the same page, at least, because the three of them return to trying to pry themselves free, each having about as much success as the others—which is none.
The door opens.
They’ve tied Bucky down in such a way that he can’t turn to see who’s approaching him, but screw them and their shitty interrogation techniques that they think are going to work on him. He tries to turn his head at least when the footsteps grow close to him, only for a small, sharp-nailed hand to work its way into his hair and yank him forward again.
“Don’t touch him.”
Bucky has to fight not to roll his eyes as Steve glares up at whoever has him by the hair. The textbook technique is always to distance yourself from other hostages to try and eliminate leverage. Then again, Bucky doubts that would fool anyone in this situation. Bucky and Steve’s connection is too well known for them to pretend anything else, and they’d already shown they were both willing to surrender to spare Clint.
Ah, crap. This is really going to suck.
Bucky reads the same ideas going through Steve’s mind. He flicks his eyes across to Clint and sees that the archer has retreated into the cold SHIELD agent persona he brings out when there is imminent pain on the horizon. Unspoken, they all agree to the same promise. No one breaks for the others. They hold out until rescue comes.
The hand in his hair tightens in response, pulling his head back until he’s forced to stare upwards. A woman. Bucky’s seen her photo in their files. Maxine Beckett. Age and country of birth are unknown. She looks like she’s in her fifties, late forties. Maybe younger. Bucky doubts people age well in HYDRA these days. Must be stressful, having the Avengers hunt you down. Ages you faster.
He doesn’t say any of that though. He’s not saying shit. They’re not going to have the satisfaction.
The woman, hums, tuts. Brings a thumb up to trace Bucky’s lips.
“I said,” Steve says, all calm anger. “Don’t touch him.”
Bucky is a second away from cursing Steve out for being so obvious, when he hears a muffled sound of protest from his left. He jerks his head away, determined to see, and fighting back a snarl when he sees a man twice his size pulling on Clint’s bonds, making sure they’re still secure. Right. Two super-soldiers, one breakable human with a head wound. Steve’s trying to direct the pain back onto them. Which, if it keeps Clint out of this, Bucky is more than fine with.
“That’s not your command to make, Rogers.” Her accent sounds American, but not quite. It’s too deliberate, too careful. Disguising her real one, then. The woman finally shoves him away, doing a cursory tug on his chains, checking he’s tied down too. Someone’s doing the same to Steve. Taking no chances, then. “The Winter Soldier is ours. Calling him by a different name and pampering him in your tower isn’t going to change that.”
Bucky doesn't even react. Of course it’s about the Soldier. Well, tough luck for HYDRA then. He breaks his vow of silence. “The Soldier’s gone,” he states. “You don’t have the resources to bring him back.”
Beckett smiles. That’s not good. “I think you’ll find everything we need is in this room, Barnes.”
Bucky meets her eye. Refuses to flinch away. “It’s Barnes now, is it?”
“For now.” Her hand is back in his hair. Scratching his scalp. Petting him. And there’s not a single thing he can do about that right now, so he’ll do plenty of things about it later. “The Soldier doesn’t have attachments. I don’t think we can say the same for you.”
He’d known it was coming. They’d all known. But there’s a difference between watching your friends get tortured for information in front of you and knowing that they’d been taken because of you. He tries for nonchalance anyway. “I’m not telling you shit.”
That gets him a nod of reassurance from Steve; a blink of understanding from Clint. He really doesn’t deserve them. He likes having them though. And he’s still going to have them after this; on that, there’s no room for compromise.
“You only need to answer one question, pet.” Wow, she came right out and said it. Good for the lady for knowing what she wants. “Which one of them are we going to hurt?”
A knife is drawn by the giant looming over Clint, its twin flashing right beside Steve’s ear. And no, Bucky is not playing their games, he did that for decades, he’s not going back to it, he’s just not.
“Bucky,” Steve starts, all too predictable and ready to fall on grenades, but Bucky cuts him off.
“Why?” he demands. "Hurting them isn't going to bring the Soldier back. There’s nothing left to bring back.”
“We’ll see,” Beckett answers. She's shifted behind him now, pulling him against her thighs. It means he can’t see her stupid, smug face, but he’d rather be able to see the enemy when given the choice. Which he isn’t being given right now. There’s only one choice he’s being given, and he’s not making it. He’s not, even though he knows the words she’s going to say next, knows the only threat she can make that will spur him into action.
“Choose one, or we hurt both.”
The knife tips draw blood; Clint’s cheek, Steve’s throat. Warning nicks only, not deep. Bucky jerks in Beckett’s grip anyway. “You don’t have to— that’s not going to achieve anything, the Soldier’s gone.”
“We’ll see,” she says again. “We’ve been watching you, Barnes. In our bases. Unearthing our secrets.” She stresses the last word in a way that makes it clear they were anything but. How long have they been following false intel? “It’s only fair that we’ve gathered a secret or two of yours in return.”
She jerks his head around, making him look at Clint, and Bucky’s heart sinks all the way through the disgusting stone floor. She knows. HYDRA knows. Everyone in the damp, dark cell knows that he and Clint are more than just teammates. Clint meets his eyes, wary and reserved, coming to the same conclusion even as Bucky watches his resolve harden. The archer darts his eyes from Steve, then down at himself. Permission to choose him. To spare Steve.
Well, Steve Rogers was never one to be outdone in heroic sacrifices. “It’s fine, Buck,” he starts, only to break off as the agent behind him cuffs him over the head.
“They don’t get to choose,” Beckett whispers in Bucky’s ear. “You do. Choose one, or stay silent and choose both. It’s up to you either way.”
Bucky swallows. Shifts on his aching knees. Refuses to let the rising panic show on his face. Tests the chains—no magical give has been granted in the past five minutes. This is happening. They just have to get through it with the least damage possible until rescue arrives which it will, it has to.
So. Bucky will approach this practically. He’ll find the method that keeps their meager but ridiculously talented team in as few pieces as possible. It’s not about emotions; it’s about tactics.
Bucky almost full-body jerks at that thought, and one look at Beckett’s smirk tells him she knows exactly what path he had started to go down before the torture has even begun. Tactics over emotions. Reserving all possible resources. Prioritizing the mission over all other costs. Programming removed by Shuri’s capable hands or not, those thoughts were all Winter Soldier. He still goes there sometimes, he can’t help it, so much of it lines up with his military training. Mission success always comes first, for his country, for HYDRA, for whichever higher power that’s puppeteering him at that moment.
He still falls back into it sometimes, although he’s getting better. He thinks. He hopes. Sam’s helped a lot with that, even though Bucky has never admitted it. Throwing decisions to Bucky in the field, making sure he’s thinking with his flesh and blood brain and not the cyborg one Sam still teases him for having. Those attempts usually get a huff on a good day and a snarl on a bad one, but at this point it’s mostly for show. They both know he needs a reminder every now and then, from someone he doesn’t mind snapping at. Not that he should snap at Sam as much as he does, really. Especially as it’s likely the Falcon that’s going to be crashing through those doors and kicking this smug Red Skull wannabe right into one of the Avengers’ holding cells. The kind with no key. Which is dumb, they all have keys, they—
A small inhale of pain, cut off before it’s barely begun, jerks him back to reality. There’s a fresh line of blood right above Clint’s eyebrow now, the archer managing a truly impressive glare at the knife-holder even as red starts to soak into the gag.
“You,” Beckett places a hand on Bucky’s forehead, tilting his head back until he’s all but straining against the collar, “don’t get to disappear in there. Which one are we hurting, Barnes? Last chance.”
Hurting. He latches onto that word, even as he can hear Sam calling him out for being grim. It’s not about a mission, or preserving resources. It’s about preventing as much pain as he can. That’s what Sam would do, even when there’s a cost. He’d like to put Steve in that category too, except he knows better. Steve pursued his morals and stupid plucky sense of right and wrong straight into a frozen ocean, and he hasn’t stopped even after he crossed over into the next century. It’s not as if Steve enjoys causing pain, but Bucky’s chewed him out enough times after seeing footage of him fighting Batroc without his cowl or the shield to know the path of least injury isn’t usually Steve’s modus operandi.
Bucky doesn’t even pull Clint into that analysis, because he can’t think of anything more unfair. He’s mapped out enough of his boyfriend’s life by now to know that it’s a patchwork quilt of various traumas and injustices, and an ugly one at that. Clint fights back. He doesn’t always come out on top. He keeps fighting anyway. He and Steve are alike in that way, even as Clint’s methods are far more wily than Steve’s propensity to charge into the first sign of danger. They’re both unable to put the fight down too—Steve unable to rest due to duty; Clint determined to atone for all the nightmares that have him shaking in Bucky’s arms at night. And maybe, if Bucky plays this right, they can avoid today being added to that ever-growing list.
So he’ll pull a bit from all three of them. Avoid as much pain as possible, like Sam. Go up against any opponent, with or without his usual assets, like Steve. And stay wily in the face of overwhelming odds, like Clint.
(And if there’s a bonus option that lets him break out of his bonds and snap all their necks with his thighs like Natasha, he’ll happily take it all the way to the proverbial bank.)
Bucky forces himself to make eye contact with Beckett—something the Winter Soldier was expressly forbidden from doing with nearly all his earlier handlers. It was a practice they had dropped as HYDRA had grown more modern, some of the more traditional methods either growing outdated or just updated, but Bucky would pay good money to bet that Beckett’s more on the traditional side of things. Sure enough, he spots the tiniest fraction of displeasure in the way her forehead adds a wrinkle.
“Rogers,” he says.
He knows it’s the right choice, the practical choice—the path to least pain. Steve would agree with him, had offered to do this. He’s not the scrawny kid who had adopted Bucky back in Brooklyn. He isn’t the kid who Bucky had pulled out of street fight after street fight, or sat at the bedside of every winter sure that, this time, it had to be it. It never was. Steve Rogers pulled through every time, long before the serum. This makes sense—to give the torture to the option with the enhanced healing factor, the denser bones, the higher pain tolerance.
Well. Bucky’s not actually so sure about that last one. Clint lets pain roll off him like oil on water. Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever seen him without some kind of injury, even though Clint doesn’t live up to the almost suicidal reputation he’d gained during his time at SHIELD. Clint doesn’t get hurt more often because he’s stupid more often—although they have had many an argument about Clint’s more questionable calls that Bucky refuses to acknowledge mirror those he has with Sam about Bucky’s antics—but because Clint is always willing to go that extra bit further if it means one more life gets spared. Even if that life is a dog. Hell, it’s often a dog.
Another thing Steve and Clint have in common. The rushing into danger part, at least. Steve’s more of a cat person, despite insistences to the contrary. But Bucky’s seen how he acts around Alpine. Bucky has footage of how Steve acts around Alpine.
The pain part, not so much. It had taken a bit of dancing around each other until Clint had finally admitted that yes, he liked a little pain now and then, so would Bucky stop fucking tip-toeing around him and put that metal arm to good use already? They never do anything too out there—Clint gets his fair share of real injuries out on the field that Bucky would give his other arm before he added to them—but a sharp slap or a harsh hair pull or Bucky sinking his human fingernails into skin nurse an itch that Bucky can see needs to be scratched. He was even happier to do so after he realized that what Clint was really after was the reassurance that came after the pain; an environment to make the destruction safe, to know that comfort would be offered after the hurt.
Steve used to have a relationship with pain too. Proving he could take it; refusing anyone’s help to clean him up afterward. Trying to prove he was just like everybody else, and shrugging off all of Bucky’s insistence that he wasn’t and that was okay, that Steve didn’t need to fight to prove himself a good man. Or start yet another brawl during the war footage played before every movie.
Things had been different after the serum. Steve could take more pain, more injury—could and would—but he didn’t seek it out after that. Bucky had only seen him talk about the procedure itself once, and that was when Steve had shaken himself awake in their shared tent yelling, “I can keep going, don’t stop, I can keep going!” before breaking down in Bucky’s arms. When Steve had refused to discuss it again, Bucky had approached Peggy.
The agent had gone a shade paler when Bucky brought it up, lips thinning as she said, low and hoarse— “Sometimes I still think about the screaming.”
The woman behind Steve looks plenty keen to wring out some screams of her own, but she halts when Beckett raises a hand, her gaze still on Bucky. “Rogers?” she repeats. “That’s not very familiar of you. Not with your dearest friend.”
He sees the game she’s playing, refuses to draw it out. It’s the only resistance he can offer at this point. “Steve,” he chokes out, tasting bile. “I choose Steve.”
“Beautiful.” She rakes him up and down in a way that makes his spine feel fused into place. The least pain possible. He can do this. He can do this all day. “Let’s begin then, shall we?”
