Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve knows from day one that Bucky isn’t his soulmate. The bright red handprint on the back of his neck has always been too big to be Steve’s; it covered his whole back when he was born, or so Steve overheard Bucky’s ma saying to his own. Bucky was born when Steve’d just barely been conceived and he belongs to someone bigger and older and stronger than Steve will ever live to be.

It’s better that Bucky isn’t his soulmate, Steve reminds himself when he thinks about that, not letting himself look at the back of the other’s neck where the long stretch of broad fingers shows. Bucky’s mark has never grown or changed, not all his life, so his soulmate’s probably a good twenty years older than him; probably went all that time thinking they’d never get a mark at all until Bucky’s newborn soul reached out and touched them.

They’ll appreciate him, Steve tells himself. Of course they will, after waiting twenty years to even know he existed. And it’s a man’s handprint, so he’ll have a job and a place all set up, he’ll have years to save money and build a life for Bucky to slip right into, and Bucky’ll meet him and--and get swept right off his feet in a whirlwind romance and married the next June in a picture-perfect ceremony with flowers and tears and everything Bucky wants, probably. That’s what everyone says when they talk about everyone else’s soulmarks. More’n a few of their classmates are jealous of Bucky’s big and brilliant mark, of the confidence and certainty so obvious in it.

None of them are jealous of Steve’s, because Steve doesn’t have one.

Of course he doesn’t. He won’t live long enough for it to matter.

Their classmates all dream about the hands that will touch their necks, the necks their hands will touch, and Steve dreams that Bucky’s mark is small and skinny-fingered and would respond to him. He dreams that if he laid a hand on it that bold red would bleed silver or blue or something iridescent and Bucky would go pliant and soft at the change, would let him take care of him for once.

Then he hates himself, because of course that isn’t what’s going to happen. Bucky’s soulmate will show up with the perfect life all arranged and kiss him sweet and romantic like in the pictures and not die on him and Bucky will--and Bucky will--

And Bucky will forget whispering, “I don’t want him, Stevie,” that one late night when Steve’s ma was on shift and they were alone in the dark in the living room.

Will forget Steve’s first kiss.

It’d hurt so bad to keep his hands off Bucky’s mark that night. Steve’s been punched in the face and kicked in the ribs and broken bones and boiled in fever and coughed until his throat bled and still can’t think of anything that’s hurt as bad as that had. He’s not sure anything could.

Except for the idea of touching Bucky's mark and not getting a response. That . . . that would have hurt worse.

So he hadn’t.

Chapter Text

The asset knows from the first glimpse that the man on the roof is his soulmate.

The asset knows from the first glimpse that the man on the bridge is his soulmate.

The asset knows from the first glimpse that the man on the helicarrier is his--

“You’re my mission!” he roars, but maybe he’s screaming, and everything hurts. And the man doesn’t fight him anymore, doesn’t even argue, just lays back defenseless and exposed underneath him and tells him to end it. Tells him to end it because he will be there until the end, because that is the only way he will--will leave and be gone and stop. Stop doing what--what he’s doing.

The man.

His mission.

The asset does not have a soulmate. Soulmates are for people with souls. Soulmates are--soulmates touch each other and then they can both tell. The asset has touched his mission but his mission is not telling him they are soulmates, his mission is a liar. Or not his soulmate. Or. Or.

The asset does not have a soulmate. He does not. The bloody-looking smear of a handprint on the back of his neck that he has glimpsed in the reflection of bright scalpels and polished medical equipment is not a soulmark, it is just . . . a mark. A tattoo so he would not stand out in a crowd, maybe, except tattoos can’t pass for soulmarks even from a distance and that red is so bright it would stand out in any crowd and every time he leaves the base they wrap his throat in leather so nothing will show.

But it’s not a soulmark, because soulmarks are for people with soulmates and soulmates are for people who are people.

And then the floor gives way, and the asset doesn’t even have to do anything to complete his mission now, the river will do it for him, and . . . and . . . and it’s high. It’s high, and the asset could fall, and something in him is terrified by that, as terrified as he is of the man who is his mission.

And the terrified part of him--that’s the part that jumps.

Chapter Text

“Your soulmark doesn’t have fingerprints,” Bucky rasps, and Steve goes still.

“What?” he tries, turning away from the bathroom mirror to stare at the other where he’s hovering in the doorway. Bucky visibly struggles, then repeats himself.

“Your soulmark doesn’t have fingerprints,” he says. “It’s. It’s not. It doesn’t.”

“I don’t have a soulmark. I’ve never had one,” Steve says blankly, which just might be the first time he’s contradicted Bucky since he and Sam found him sitting very quietly on a cheap motel room bed in the middle of Colorado, still-wet blood all over his hands and a dossier of off-grid HYDRA bases sitting on the end table.

Those bases were not a concern anymore, when Natasha and Clint went to check them out.

“But it’s . . .” Bucky trails off, and gestures uncomfortably to the back of his own neck. “It’s there. A real one. Like--not like mine.”

“. . . what do you mean, not like yours?” Steve asks slowly, setting aside the toothpaste.

“Not. Not fake,” Bucky says, gripping the collar of his shirt instead of reaching back to touch his mark. “HYDRA gave me a fake one. Yours. It isn’t.”

“Bucky,” Steve manages to get out, strangled and hurting and hating every person who ever laid a damn hand on Bucky Barnes in his entire damn life, HYDRA or Nazi or not. “Buck, no, you--that’s your soulmark. You always had it. Everybody--everybody at school was always real jealous, ‘cause yours was so big and bright and flashy.”

“But I don’t have a soulmate,” Bucky says.

“You--you do,” Steve says, because Bucky must, if it hasn’t scarred over. Some old, lonely man in a home somewhere who never got the soulmate he waited probably twenty years and then another lifetime for, who never even got the miserable closure of a scar in wartime, but . . . but Bucky has a soulmate.

The chances of finding him before he dies are not even worth thinking about, especially finding him with Bucky in a condition to meet him and confirm, and Steve feels sick as he thinks about that. He resented that man so much when he was a kid, resented the stranger he’d never met who was going to come and take Bucky away from him, when really it was going to be the other way around all along.

Bucky should’ve come home from the war and met his soulmate and married him and had a whole life with him while Steve slept in the ice. Maybe he’d have lived long enough to welcome Steve into the new world with an old man’s smirk, but he shouldn’t have had to suffer through HYDRA and lose all chance of the life the mark on his neck promised to get here. It’s not . . . that isn’t what should’ve happened.

“I don’t,” Bucky insists, tense and visibly uncomfortable. “I remember, I--before, I remember. I told you I didn’t, before. And you . . . and you let me kiss you.”

Steve chokes a little, struggles for words, and hates himself; hates the selfishness that ruined the life Bucky and his soulmate should’ve had. He’d take back that kiss in an instant if it’d undo everything HYDRA did. He’d take back anything that would do that.

“You told me you didn’t want him,” he manages finally, still hating himself for every word of it. “Not that he wasn’t there.”

“No,” Bucky repeats uneasily, shaking his head. “I don’t have a soulmate. It’d be--it’d be you, if I had one. And it’s not. So I don’t.”

Steve does not have an answer for that. Bucky should hate him. Bucky should be grieving and furious. He should not be telling him that he doesn’t care about the man he was supposed to live and die for.

“Bucky,” he says helplessly, just shaking his head.

“It makes me angry,” Bucky says, his eyes flicking down to look at Steve’s neck, although his voice is flat and toneless and doesn’t sound angry at all. “That should be my hand.”

Steve opens his mouth to tell him--something, but then out of the corner of his eye he glimpses the back of his own neck in the mirror, and . . .

“What the hell,” he says in disbelief, because there is something there, and when he jerks the left door of the mirrored medicine cabinet forward just so, he can see the reflection of it in the right. There’s a handprint on his neck. A pale, pale handprint, barely any lighter than his skin, barely showing at all even under direct light, but still there. And Bucky’s right: it doesn’t have fingerprints.

It has plates.

It is, some distant part of Steve thinks as he stares, the kind of handprint a ghost would leave.

Chapter Text

The man keeps calling him Bucky, but the asset doesn’t think of himself that way. He doesn’t have names, not unless they’re programmed into him; he doesn’t want a name. Names are for missions, names are identities, and the asset does not want another mission or identity, does not want assigned to fight the good fight again.

The asset is just the asset. He doesn’t want to be anything else.

And the man already told him he can have whatever he wants now.

The man has not spoken to him since last night. The man has not spoken to anyone, which annoys the asset. The man could be dead; he could’ve killed him and cleared out hours ago and be halfway to Budapest by now.

(he’s not sure why Budapest specifically. just--he could be there by now.)

He could also be kissing the man. They did, once, when the asset was a cover identity. The asset doesn’t want the identity back, doesn’t want the soulmate the man claims that identity had; he just wants to be kissing him again. He wants to reach out and peel that mark the man claimed not to have off his neck and slice it to pieces and flush it down a storm drain. He wants the man to touch him everywhere, even the place where only his so-called soulmate is supposed to, because who the hell is--

(bucky)

--that person anyway, where the hell are they? Not here. Not keeping him alive and free, not coming for him no matter what identity he is or isn’t wearing, what name he does or doesn’t have. In what world would the asset want any soulmate besides the person doing that?

Even if he doesn’t have a soul.

The problem with that, though, is that the man does have a soul, and the man cares about things like soulmates. The man cares about whoever that pale misshapen handprint on his neck belongs to even though the asset could grip him tight and leave a bruise that would show stronger and darker and better.

That would count, wouldn’t it, a grip that turned to a bruise--that would be a response.

It should count, the asset thinks, watching the man sit very quietly on the opposite side of the apartment. Neither of them is pretending to do anything. The asset considers walking over and dragging the man forward against his body or pushing into his lap or just stripping himself for him, but doesn’t know which one the man would respond to or if he’d respond to anything like that at all.

The asset only wants him to respond.

And respond.

“I’ll cut it off,” he says finally, and the man starts in surprise and jerks his head up.

“You’ll--what?” he asks blankly, his first words all day, and the asset twists as best as he can to show the lie of a mark that grips the back of his neck while still keeping eye contact, dragging the collar of his shirt down to display as much of it as possible.

“I’ll cut it off,” he repeats. “Then it won’t matter if he finds me, he won’t be able to extract me. And you can decommission me when you find yours.”

“What,” the man chokes, horrified, but the asset ignores that and ploughs on.

“You said I could have what I want,” he says. “That means I get to pick who I belong to now. I’m not his asset, I’m yours.”

“You’re his soulmate,” the man says, voice strangled, and the asset’s mouth twists in frustration.

“No,” he insists, letting go of his collar to strip his shirt off completely and throwing it aside as he rummages for a knife. He doesn’t have a soul. Doesn’t even want one. And more than that--“Not anyone’s anything, if it’s not you.”

He finds the thinnest blade he’s carrying and flicks it out into his fingers, free hand reaching to pull the offending skin taut, and the man makes an alarmed sound and jumps to his feet, grabbing the asset’s hands.

“Bucky, don’t!” the man blurts, horrified again. “That’s--you just don’t remember. He’s your soulmate, he was supposed to take care of you. He was supposed to show up and sweep you off your feet and--and marry you. Make you . . . make you happy.”

“No,” the asset says, staring up at him blankly.

“That’s--”

“No,” the asset repeats, sharper this time. “That’s what other people said. Not what I said.”

That identity only ever said one thing about its soulmate, and the man was there for it. He was a boy, then, but he was still there for it. Right now the man is silent, just staring at him, and the asset just wants a skinning knife and thirty seconds’ privacy to use it in.

“Bucky,” the man says helplessly, his hands dropping away.

“Who’s better than me?” the asset demands, and the man balks.

“What?” he asks, expression disbelieving.

“On your neck!” the asset snaps, gesturing sharply with the knife. “You promised me until the end! But there’s someone on your neck!”

“That’s not . . .” The man cringes, reaching back to touch the mark, and the asset glares at him.

“That is,” he says, because he is just an asset, he understands that. But he still gets to choose. “I don’t want anyone else. So you just keep me until you do, then decommission me.”

“Jesus, Buck--” the man chokes in horror, and the asset’s glare darkens. “No! It’s not--you’re not mine. You were . . . you were born with a soulmark. And it was always the size it is now, it never changed. I’m younger than you, it would’ve been--it would’ve changed.”

“I don’t care,” the asset says again, because he doesn’t. He knows he must belong to someone. Of course he must. But this time he chose that someone, and he’s not going back on that just because the man has mistaken his programming for the existence of an immortal soul. “Keep me until the hand on your neck comes for you and then decommission me. Or don’t. Put me at the foot of the bed. Put me in the basement or a cell and bring me out when you need me. I don’t care. I can still be a valuable asset. I will shape history for you.”

The man stares at him, helpless and heartbroken, and the asset grits his teeth and clenches his fists. It’s not a lie. He failed his last mission but he can still be valuable, he will make the world work the way the man wants it to. He’s done it before, and he didn’t even want to, then.

But for the man--for the man, the asset would shape so much more than just a century.

“Bucky,” the man says hoarsely, grabbing the asset’s hand and turning it over in his own. The asset looks down at it. He has killed people for touching him less deliberately than that. He has done nothing to people who touched him so much more terribly. “That’s not . . . it’s your hand on my neck, Buck. Of course it’s your hand on my neck. I won’t keep you because it’s not mine on yours.”

The man’s calloused fingertips touch the asset’s smooth metal ones, and for the first time the asset makes the connection that he should’ve made the instant he saw the man’s soulmark--his left hand doesn’t have fingerprints. And he knew that, but it hadn’t even occurred to him.

He stares at his hand. He hadn’t thought that the man could have his mark on him. A person needs a soul to be able to mark another person.

A person needs to be a fucking person.

“That’s not even a real hand,” he says uneasily, eyes flicking to the man’s neck--to the glimpse of too-smooth jointed fingers just barely showing at the sides. Except if he did have a soul . . .

Of course that would be the hand his soul reached out with. Of course that would be the mark it left: cold and sleek and almost impossible to see. He’s not sure anyone without enhanced vision could see it.

. . . he wonders how long it’s been on the man’s neck.

“It’s your hand,” the man says softly, squeezing it. The asset wants to take it back, but doesn’t ever want to take it back.

“Then I’ll touch it,” he says abruptly, and the man goes still.

“That’s--that’s not--” he starts uncomfortably, and the asset grits his teeth again.

“You said it’s my hand,” he says. “If it’s my hand you have to keep me. Until--until extraction.”

That’s a lie. He will never be extracted. He will decommission himself before he lets anyone extract him.

The man promised.

He promised.

“I . . .” The man hesitates, then sags forward, shoulders slumping. “Alright,” he says quietly. “You can touch it.”

The asset jerks forward instantly with the permission and the man startles and flinches back, and the asset freezes with his hand in the air between them, suddenly realizing--he has never touched the man, except to hurt him. He has never touched anyone with this hand except to hurt them.

“Ah,” he manages, eyes wide, and then he can’t breathe.

“Bucky?” the man asks, voice dropping soft, and the asset’s fingers twitch involuntarily. They’ll hurt the man, the asset thinks in irrational panic, yanking them back to his chest.

“I didn’t--I don’t--” he tries, and then he’s gulping in air in big, broken breaths, and the man’s grabbing him and telling him lies, telling him things that can’t be true like it’s okay, it’s okay, it’ll be okay, you’re alright--

“Bucky, I swear, it’s okay,” the man says, near-pleading. “It’s okay, God, please don’t look at me like that--”

“I hurt you,” the asset chokes, clenching his metal hand into a fist, and the man cuts himself off and goes still. “I’ve only hurt you. This is the hand on your neck and it’s only hurt you.”

“That’s not true,” the man says. “That’s not even close to true. You pulled me outta more scrapes than anybody else, in and out of the war. You never hurt me.”

“This hand did!” the asset shouts furiously, grabbing it with the flesh-and-blood one and wishing he could tear the whole fucking arm off. It’s cold. The man wouldn’t want it to touch him even if it hadn’t hurt him. The asset is not that old black-and-white identity with the crooked smirk and two warm hands that could have reached out and marked the man the way he should be marked.

“Bucky,” the man says, helpless again, and the asset hates himself for this.

“It ain’t right,” he says. “Oughta been Carter or Wilson or Romanov, somebody who could fuckin’ touch you. Oughta been Barnes. Barnes coulda touched you.”

“. . . you are Barnes, Bucky,” the man reminds him quietly, voice gone low and hurt. The asset shakes his head, fist clenching tighter.

“Ain’t,” he says.

“Are,” the man counters lowly, gripping the asset’s flesh and blood arm hard so he can feel it. The asset wants to throw up. His head feels like it’s on fire. Almost exactly like it’s on fire.

“You let Barnes kiss you,” he says, voice near-blank. The man stiffens for a moment, but nods wary agreement a moment later. “He tried real hard to make it nice, ‘cause he knew it was your first.”

“It was real nice,” the man agrees in that same quiet voice, but he sounds sad about it. Not like it was nice at all. But it was, the asset knows, because that identity had done research and practiced while thinking of the man, about how it would kiss the man--the boy--if it ever had the chance. If the boy would let it have the chance.

The boy did, once.

“I am not nice,” the asset says, tone dropping flat and dead. The man tenses, but doesn’t flinch.

“I never liked you for being nice,” he says. “I liked you because I knew there wasn’t a damn disaster I could get into that you wouldn’t have my six. And your habit of shooting people before they shot me, I’ll admit I was pretty attached to that one.”

The asset stares at the man, and the man quirks the corner of his mouth up. It’s . . . supposed to be a joke, he thinks. Or not a joke, but . . .

“Are you trying to make me laugh?” he asks blankly.

“I--not exactly,” the man says, expression a little rueful. “Break the tension, maybe.”

“. . . you were trying to make me laugh,” the asset repeats eventually, just looking at him. Because the man thinks he’s a defunct cover identity. Because the man thinks his programming is a soul.

Because . . .

“Come here,” the man says, holding out his hand for the asset’s prosthetic one. The asset hesitates, but gives it to him. The man imitates a smile and lifts it to his neck, turning so the asset can see the back of it, and the asset’s heart trips.

His fingers touch the man’s mark, and nothing happens. The asset’s stomach drops out. And then his heart beats again, and the marks snaps to black--no slow spread, no all-over darkening, just one moment it is the near-perfect match to the man’s skin that maybe just-human eyes could not even have discerned and the next it is the starkest, darkest black the asset has ever seen.

“. . . I thought it would be red,” he says, voice not as toneless as he means it to be, and the man glances up at him from under his lashes. His face looks flushed and soft and . . . different.

“It’s not?” the man asks. The asset swallows.

“Black,” he says, still staring at it. “It’s black.”

It’s so black; a night without stars, a long dangerous drop, the inside of a predator’s mouth. A laboratory with the lights turned off. And the asset thinks: it’s terrible, it’s a terrible color to put on the man. It’s exactly the wrong color for the man. Exactly the right one for the asset’s soul.

And it’s not blood or bruise-colored.

. . . he’s never brought a color that wasn’t blood or a bruise to someone’s skin before.

“Touch mine,” the asset begs unthinkingly, faster than he’s begged in--in a very long time. The man startles, eyes flicking up to the asset’s.

“It won’t respond, Buck,” he says quietly. “I told you--you always had the same mark. Wasn’t me.”

“But you didn’t have this,” the asset says, is sure, because even if his cover identity should maybe not have been able to see it--well, it would’ve seen it. The asset is sure. That identity spent enough time looking at the back of the man’s neck to know. “Before I had this hand you didn’t have a mark at all.”

“That doesn’t change your mark,” the man says, but the asset is already shaking his head in frustration, tightening his grip on the back of the man’s neck so the black stays.

“It wouldn’t,” he says. “Not yours.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” the man says, quietly resigned, and the asset’s shoulders go tense. It--he doesn’t--he doesn’t want to say it. Doesn’t want to see the face the man will make.

“Barnes isn’t your soulmate,” he says anyway, voice rough. “It’s me. I am.”

“You are B--”

“I ain’t!” the asset snaps, shoulders still too-tight and trembling under the tension. “I ain’t. An’ I don’t wanna be, ‘cause Barnes wasn’t your asset. I mean--your--” He struggles, but the right word won’t come, and he hates the look on the man’s face.

“My soulmate,” the man says, and the asset’s shoulders crumple and he just barely keeps his grip on the other’s neck, staring at the mark like . . . like he doesn’t know. Like it’s the only thing, maybe. He remembers his creation; the long slow horrors and unspeakable agonies of it. He wonders how long it took for this mark to come in.

“There wasn’t a Winter Soldier when you were born. No hand to make the mark, back then,” the asset reminds the man as he thinks of those things, the rough edge coming in harder in his voice. “But from the damn second you were conceived, there was always a Captain America.”

“That’s not . . . that’s not how it works,” the man murmurs, shaking his head, and the asset gives him the useless, humorless copy of a smirk. The man stares at him.

“Touch me,” the asset says, leaning in and tipping his head meaningfully as he stares back. “Your soul already did it. This is just proving it.”

He knows it will prove it. Because it doesn’t matter, actually, if the mark will respond to the man or not--the asset gets to choose, now, and the man is the only one he would ever, ever choose. The only thing that matters about the mark is that it will prove to the man that he isn’t taking away . . . whatever, exactly, the man thinks he is taking away from him.

The only thing the man ever took away from the asset was the choke chain around his throat.

Of course doing that would leave a mark.

“I can’t,” the man says. “It’s not right.”

“Do it anyway,” the asset says, even though it is the rightest thing he could imagine. And the man hesitates for a moment, but then reaches out and touches him. And the asset . . .

“Oh,” the man breathes, eyes wide.

“Oh,” the asset sighs, going pliant and soft at the contact and knowing exactly what he already knew. What his old cover knew, whispering promises and kissing a boy without even the ghost of a mark in the dark.

He chose the right person to take care of him.

He knew it from day one.