Chapter Text
Invictus by English poet William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Bucky runs.
By the time Steve wakes up in the hospital, sore but healing, and he gets filled in from Sam and Natasha, two days have passed. More than enough time for Bucky to have gone anywhere.
It’s also more than enough time for Natasha to have set them up with a new base of operations.
“It’s called a home, not a ‘base of operations',” Sam tells them. “That’s not healthy. You two need to improve your work-life balance.”
“What’s work-life balance?” Nat asks. “I think they missed that when they trained me in the Red Room.”
“Don’t look at me. I grew up in the Depression,” he adds with a smile.
“Sure,” Sam says, “I don’t know how either of you would ever learn something new. You’re right.”
“Fine, a compromise. The third bedroom becomes a ‘room of operations’,” Nat says, looking up at Sam with a smirk.
He frowns at Nat. “You want Sam and I to share a room?”
“No,” Sam and Nat say together.
That doesn’t make sense, unless, “Oh! Alright then.”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Steve, grab the boxes, and let's get this set up. Tony wants to make sure Jarvis is set up today.”
He and Nat move down towards the third room, the ‘room of operations’ when they hear Sam yell from down the hall, “who the hell is Jarvis?”
Steve doesn’t throw his shield at the corner of the room. It’s a close thing, he does have the shield in his hand, but something about the shadow looks familiar.
“Buck?” he whispers.
The shadow shifts nervously.
“It’s alright. You can just stay there. You don’t have to come out.”
The shadow stills. Steve lays back down but turns his body so he’s facing the dark corner. He doesn’t drift off to sleep until Bucky leaves but when he does, it’s finally a night free from garish nightmares of what could be happening to Bucky.
Steve shuffles through the newest intel on Bucky...without any luck. It’s an exceedingly frustrating process and it’s only, he looks down at his phone, 9:00 in the morning.
“Good morning Steve,” Sam says going straight for the coffee machine. They didn’t run this morning like they usually do. Steve wanted to get started on the intel. Steve grunts a hello in return.
“What was that now? I don’t speak crabby supersoldier.”
“Sorry, Samuel. Good morning. How are you?”
“I do speak sassy supersoldier,” Sam shoots back, “I’m fine, thanks for asking, Steven. I take it the intel isn’t what you were hoping for?”
He drops the pages to the table. “He’s making this really difficult.”
Months of looking and he’s gotten nowhere. Every trail is cold by the time they find it. Bucky doesn’t stay anywhere long enough to establish a pattern.
“Remember what I told you before?”
“He’s not doing it to me.”
“Right,” Sam sets a mug of coffee down in front of him and takes the seat next to him. “The guy pulled you out of that river. With a busted shoulder, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And we’ve been through the info from Nat’s info dump, so we know about the chair and the trigger words.”
“The torture.”
“And the torture. He’s being cautious. And he does that creepy watching you sleep at night thing.”
“Some would call it romantic.”
“Some would call it stalking.”
“Touche,” he says with a laugh, “But Buck and I did always spend a lot of time in each other’s pockets.”
“It is a good sign that he’s reaching out,” Sam tells him earnestly. Steve believes him. It is a good sign. He looks forward to seeing that shadow up against the wall. But he can hardly be blamed for wanting more.
“He’s scared,” he says. He hates that Bucky is scared and Steve isn’t there with him. “I’ve always been there to hold him through his fears. To let him know that he’s not alone.”
Sam gives him a sympathetic look. “He may not remember that yet.”
“He will though. I’m sure of it.”
“Hey Buck,” he says to the shadow in the corner.
The shadow shifts.
“You want to hear about my day?” he asks. A moment passes and Bucky nods.
“I went for a run with Sam in the morning. It helps to be able to burn off some of the excess energy. I’m not sure if you have to do anything like that. Later, Nat and I looked through some intel. There’s a lot to sort through. It’s pretty boring.”
Bucky nods again.
He laughs. “Goodnight Bucky. I love you.”
“Steve!” Natasha yells as she sweeps into the intel room. “We’ve got a hit on Barnes.”
“Where?” He grabs his shield. “Did you talk to Tony about a Quinjet? I want to be wheels up as soon as possible.”
“No, Steve, he’s here.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, he’s in DC. Sam’s going to meet us there.”
It knows what it is doing. No. He knows what he is doing.
It’s a difficult transition, going from a thing to a person. But one of the luxuries of the serum is his brain’s ability to heal. It doesn’t always help. Just because he can say or think the words, doesn’t mean that he always feels them or believes them. But it’s only been a month. He is a work in progress. The brain is healing, but the memories are still a mess.
He walks through the Captain America Exhibit carefully taking in all the information. There are pictures of the Captain, of Steve, from before the serum, and why wouldn’t there be? The Captain is a well-documented and funded science experiment. Not like himself, who, while well documented, was a basement lab experiment, made with whatever Arnim could get hold of, except for the cube. That was special.
He proceeds.
Picture after picture. The Captain with the old scientist. The Captain with the younger scientist. He’s a loudmouth. And how does he know that? It’s true though. He knows this truth deep down. He takes out his notepad and writes it down. He keeps track of all of the memories he feels certain of.
Then a snapshot of the Captain with Carter. Carter’s agency had owned him last, but he’d never reported directly to her that he can remember. Perhaps he was too low down for her to concern herself with. She only had to give the orders. He already has a page dedicated to Agent Carter. It’s a confusing mess.
He moves on. The crowd thins. Patrons are silently being escorted out of the building. He’s running out of time.
The further he walks along the wall, the farther back in time he travels until he’s confronted with a wall full of art. The Captain was an artist. Another truth. Most of his notebooks are dedicated to Steve. He had already written down that Steve was an artist, but it’s always good to write down another confirmation.
On the wall are drawings of landscapes and architecture. There’s a building that he is sure he sat in, laying in wait before he assassinated a husband and wife in the 1970s.
He takes a step to the left.
He leaves the gentle landscapes and dramatic architectural feats behind. This art is people. A man in a bowler cap. He has a mustache that anyone would remember, not conducive to spy work.
Next, a man who lived in Indiana and then moved to California.
There were even three of us back in my kindergarten class, but by then I was already Bucky.
Jimmy. It hurts, but he knows it’s true, so Jimmy goes into the book. He takes another step to the left.
There’s a woman. She’s floating in a filthy alley with her arm outstretched. She’s directing a boy, a stupid curly-headed boy, and his new best friend, a boy sure of heart, to a treasure covered by refuse.
Opal.
He’s got a separate notebook for the dead. For his spirits and monsters and ghosts. He pulls the notebook from his backpack and opens it to a clean sheet and writes Opal.
He knows he’s run out of time, but he decides to make his way to his own memorial and sits. The bench is empty, as is the rest of the museum now. He actually got longer than he’d thought. He doesn’t write down any of the facts from the inscription. They have him listed as dead. Who knows what else they’ve got wrong about him.
“Buck,” Steve says from behind him.
“How did you know it was me? I’m wearing a ballcap and everything,” he says.
“Well, I guess he recovered his sense of humor,” another voice adds. The voice is familiar though. One that he’s heard before. Oh.
“Sorry about your wings, and kicking you off the helicarrier, and, did I rip out your steering wheel?”
“You most certainly did.”
“Sam, ” Steve whispers.
“Fine. I’ll be right over there. If you need me,” Sam announces loudly.
“Buck-”
“I’m sorry I shot you. Three times. And stabbed you. Broke your face…”
“Bucky.” Steve kneels down in front of him and gently and slowly lifts a hand.
Sam clears his throat noisily from where he’s standing.
Steve’s hand drops. “Can I take your hat off?”
Seems like a silly question, he thinks at first. But then he gets it and appreciates it. They’ve been through the intel. They know how much control he’s had over his own body for the last seventy years. He nods.
Steve’s hands come back up again and slide the cap off his head. “Do you know who I am?”
“Pal, we are literally sitting in the Smithsonian’s Captain America Exhibit,” he says with a roll of his eyes. Across the room, he hears Sam laughing.
Steve smiles and it lights up his face. “Fair enough. But do you remember me?”
He remembers being pulled from his chamber that last time. Seeing the picture of Steve on the magazine cover and feeling some pull to go look for him. He remembers how he found him, by looking for his shine. He remembers going to his apartment and the feeling of failure when he watched Steve cry. There’s more now. The months they’ve been apart, he’s regained a lot of memories. He may not have everything, but he’s got a start.
“Yes,” he says, “I remember you.”
They take Bucky back to their house. Sam drives because according to him, Steve’s likely to drive them all off the road since he can’t keep his eyes off Bucky.
Sam’s not wrong. He can’t stop looking at Bucky, here in the flesh. He’s lost some of the bulkiness he had months ago and he’s cut his hair. Not short like it was in the war, but it’s not as long as it was before either.
“I like your hair,” he blurts out.
“Jesus, help us,” Sam murmurs from the front.
Bucky looks down with a smile, a slight blush on his cheeks. “Thanks.”
They make it home without making Sam combust in the front seat and soon enough it’s just the two of them.
“So, uh, this is my room over here. I guess you know that, from the visiting.” Steve does not understand how this is so difficult. They lived together for most of their lives, or most of Steve’s life, he supposes.
“I can sleep on the couch out here. Or on the floor. Or-”
“We can share,” Bucky says. “I remember us. I’m not ready to pick all that back up. But, I think I’ll be alright sharing. But, just so you know, I rarely slept in beds, so I’m still trying to get used to it. I might end up on the floor.”
“Ok,” he says. “I had a hard time with that too. The bed that is. Sam actually helped find a mattress that I don’t hate.”
They crawl into bed like it’s their first time laying next to one another. It would be comical, if not for the tragic circumstances behind it. He tries not to move too much, tries not to stray onto the other side of the bed.
“I remember us,” Bucky says in the dark. “I remember a lot now. And I wanted to say that I love you too.”
“I love you so much, Buck. I missed you every day we were apart.
“Can I,” Bucky starts, moving closer until he’s nestled right next to Steve’s arm. Bucky wraps his finger, his metal fingers around his bicep, and rests his forehead there against his shoulder, “Is this ok? Do you mind the arm?”
“This is perfect, Bucky. Your arm doesn’t bother me at all.”
“Goodnight, Stevie. I love you.”
“Goodnight, Buck. I love you too,” he says and then he lays in the dark and watches the man he loves sleep.
“You’re going to have to give us some background here,” Sam says from where he’s sitting beside the Widow.
“Has Steve told you anything?” Bucky asks.
“A little,” Nat says. “He told me about Zola. That we needed to wear ear protection. He said that he could make us do anything he wanted just by saying it.”
Bucky nods, “That’s true. I’m not sure about non-enhanced people, but for people like me and Steve, it’ll wear off. Handler Rumlow was the same.”
“What could Pierce do?” Sam asks.
“Handler Pierce, he can implant thoughts. It’s a little more time-intensive, precision works. Zola and Rumlow, their orders were strong, but they felt like they were floating on the surface of my brain. Pierce was like, having a surgeon cut into your brain and plant an idea that you can’t tell if it’s yours or not.”
“Fury put a bullet into Pierce though. I saw him dying.”
“What did it look like?” Bucky asks skeptically.
“It looked like he got shot in the chest and was bleeding out.”
“Then he’s not dead.”
“You think he walked off two bullets to the chest.”
“I think he would have had a plan. You don’t live nearly one hundred and not pick up a couple of tricks along the way.”
“Pierce was not one hundred…”
“Anyone else?” Steve interrupts. He’s trying to be calm, but it’s difficult to listen to Bucky talk about these monsters. They took so much from them. From Bucky.
“No. Vasily died years ago. If they come, it’ll be Pierce, Zola, and Rumlow.”
“Pierce is dead…” Nat says.
“So you want to draw them out and kill them?” Sam interrupts with a frown. Steve knows that Sam might have a problem with hunting and killing. Steve might have in the past too. But this is Hydra.
“They’re not human,” Bucky says.
“What?” The three of them say.
“Hydra is one thing, made up of humans. Invictus is a family within it. They were humans. And they were like me, had the shining. Whatever their abilities were, must have been enticing enough for Invictus to turn them. But they don’t age like us, or like normal humans. Zola is very old. At least three thousand. Pierce is close to one hundred. Rumlow is in his fifties, maybe sixties.”
“Excuse me? These guys are immortal?” Sam asks.
“No. Eat well, live long. But they’re not immortal. They have to feed to stay alive.”
“Feed off of what?” Sam asks.
“Steam. When they kill someone with the shining, it releases steam. The younger the victim the better. The more scared and the more pain they’re in, the more pure the steam is. The serum made me an anomaly.”
“These guys kill kids?” Sam asks angrily.
“These guys kidnap, torture, and murder kids. Lots of kids.”
“Alright, I think I’m on board with the hunting and killing now,” Sam says, leaning back into the couch.
“What about Pierce’s kid?” Steve asks. He’d only seen him a couple of times. “Would we need to worry about him?”
Bucky looks at them confused. “Pierce never had any kids. He may have faked a family, but he would have never been able to have kids after he turned.”
“I met his son,” he says. He definitely met his son.
“Oh, Pierce wasn’t an old man. You met Pierce without his aging mask,” Bucky says, looking relieved.
“Like what Nat was wearing right?” Sam says to them.
“Why though?” Nat asks.
“He was planning on living a long time. Maybe he was preparing for his next persona within SHIELD and Hydra?” Bucky says.
“That’s devious,” Sam says. “We need to take these guys out.”
“I don’t think we should kill them, although they can be killed. A gun would take care of them just fine. But if just one of our headsets goes out, that’s it. They’ll turn you to kill the rest of us. I don’t think it’s worth the risk. And, I don’t know how many will show up. The family, Invictus, was split up all over the world to plant the seeds of Hydra and grow within it. I only experienced the head. And,” Bucky pauses, “I don’t know if I can shoot any of them. I’ve always been under trigger words and commands.”
“So what do you suggest?” Steve asks. He’s not letting these monsters get away with what they did to Bucky. They could still come back and get him again.
“I have an idea.”
At his insistence, they take a break for lunch.
Sam orders in pizza because he says he’s not cooking enough to feed two enhanced humans and one spy. He also said he’s not trusting two men who grew up in the ’30s, one who admitted that they boiled everything, to cook for them. Steve can’t fault him for that.
“What’s he doing?” Sam asks him nodding over at Bucky, who’s sitting on the couch with his eyes closed and breathing slow and deep.
“He’s checking for Invictus,” he says.
“He can track them?”
“He can see people’s shine. But the Invictus looks different, so he can pick them out. He wants to make sure they aren’t close by.”
“Can they track him like that?”
“No,” Bucky says, opening his eyes. “Unless they turned another tracker. Johann was the only one that I knew could do that.”
“The Red Skull?” Steve asks. “Good thing we don’t have to worry about him.”
“Yeah, hopefully wherever he ended up, he stays there,” Bucky says, “We’re in the clear. No family nearby. Is the pizza here yet?”
“Let’s hear the plan, Buck,” Steve says.
He and Bucky have a pile of pizza boxes in front of them. Steve is starving, but Bucky looks dubious.
“And eat,” he adds, prodding Bucky into taking a slice.
“I was kept in cryostasis in between missions.”
“We read about that,” he says, remembering the pain of his own defrosting. He can't imagine having to do it repeatedly.
“The serum was healing my brain too quickly. I was becoming unstable. They’d already placed the trigger words and Zola was there to push me when needed. They tried drugging me too, but nothing seemed to work long term. But, and they didn’t know this, the serum wasn’t the only reason I’d become unstable. That place, at the bottom of the Силос, the Silo, it’s so saturated with murder. The ghosts of those Hydra had murdered, would attack me, feeding off of me to try to gain more power so they could get their revenge.”
“Ghosts,” Sam says.
“I think I know what you want to do,” Steve says, putting his slice down. He’s quickly losing his appetite, “and I don’t think I like it. They could hurt you. Not just Invictus, but the ghosts, right?”
“I think if I give them what they want, they’ll be more interested in Invictus than me. Plus, ghosts can’t be influenced by their abilities. We can let them take care of the killing part. And, I can take care of them if they get too close to me. Grandma taught me, remember?”
“Yeah, but…”
“I had to do it in the war too, Stevie.”
“Isn’t this a little different?” Nat asks. “You’re counting on the ghosts there to kill them and then, what if Invictus becomes ghosts?”
“They won’t. They’ll cycle.”
“What’s that mean?” Sam asks.
“It’s the reason I know Pierce isn’t dead. I watched Handler Vasily die. Their bodies start fading and flickering. Their skin disappears and then their muscles and then their bones and internal organs. The only thing that stays is their eyes, just floating there until the last cycle.”
“Oh, yeah, I did not see that happen,” Nat says.
“How do you know the ghosts will want them after all this time?” Sam asks.
“The Silo has been decommissioned for years. The ghosts were never strong enough to attack anyone but me and then I left. They’ve been starving for years.”
“Are you sure it’ll work?” Steve asks.
Bucky turns and looks at them over the cooling pile of pizzas, “I’ve done it before.”
BROOKLYN, 1941
“No. That’s not a spirit,” he tells Steve. “That’s a ghost.”
Bucky doesn’t say another word until they reach their apartment and they’re safely inside. His fear turns to guilt when he watches Steve shake his legs out.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Stevie. Are you ok?”
“I’m alright,” Steve says, rubbing his legs. “Better than the alternative, I’m guessing?”
“It wouldn’t have hurt you. I’m sorry, I should have thought about how fast I made us walk.”
Steve frowns over at him, tilts his head to one side, and looks up at him through his eyelashes. Not the sexy looking up through his eyelashes, but the you are too stupid for words look. “But it could have hurt you?”
“I mean, grandma taught me how to get rid of them. In theory, I could do it. Only, I haven’t had to do it.” And he’s scared, he doesn’t add. Steve will figure it out without him having to say.
“Then a couple of leg cramps was worth it. You don’t have to be sorry for not knowing exactly what to do right at the moment, Bucky.” See, he thinks, Steve always knows what to say.
“Come over to the sofa and I’ll give your legs a rubdown.”
Steve drapes his legs over him, groaning as he starts massaging his calves. “Are you going to go back?”
“I think I’m going to have to. I can’t just leave it. Eventually, it could gain enough strength to cause problems.”
He sneaks out of the apartment in the middle of the night. The guilt builds the longer he stands and stares at Steve, but he needs to do this on his own. It’s his first ghost and he can’t be preoccupied with Steve being nearby, possibly in harm's way.
He can feel her from where he stands at the mouth of the alley even though she’s hiding away in the farthest corner. Hiding may not be the best word. She’s lying in wait, seething.
He remembers showing his grandma the tome he made in his mind. She turned it over, inspecting all of the edges and the buckle that will keep the ghost locked away, and gave it her approval.
He walks down the alley.
Bucky learns something his grandma didn’t know. Or maybe she didn’t get the chance to tell him.
Sometimes ghosts aren’t people who did something wrong. This one in the alley, she’s clinging onto this side of the Beyond, not because she fears what’s waiting for her on the other side, but because she’s fixated on getting revenge on her killer.
He killed me, he killed me, he killed me, she says over and over.
What remains the same, is that she needs to feed to be able to become corporeal enough to hurt anyone. Which means, she needs him. He makes a deal with her, to give her what she wants in exchange for her to let go and leave to the Beyond. He doesn’t know if it’ll work, but it doesn’t seem right to trap her, not right away at least. Not if he doesn’t have to.
Talking to her isn’t like talking to any of the regular spirits. She’s angry and fixated and not really willing to carry on a conversation.
I want him dead, she tells him, I want him dead
“I want to help you,” he whispers, “but I don’t know who he is. Who is he?”
He killed me! she screams, her image flickering in and out.
He tries something different. He feels his shine and lets it grow, enough that she begins to take shape, like the ghost outside his grandma’s house all those years ago. Her face is beaten black and blue, there’s blood caked into her hair, and there are livid bruises around her neck.
“Here,” he sticks his arm out, hoping he can read who did this through the contact as he did with Alvin, “show me who he is.”
She grabs his arm hard, hard enough that he thinks she might just break it, but it does the trick. He sees the memory of her leaving the bar, arm in arm with a tall man. They make their way through the streets until they find a quiet alleyway to make out in. Bucky watches the woman die. He focuses back on the man and uses his shine to search the city before he rips his arm away from her.
I want him dead, she says again.
“I’ll bring him to you.”
Bucky floats down the familiar streets. He takes the turns he knows by heart, ones he walks every day. He hides himself away when he enters the club. It’s nearing closing time, the official one anyway, so there’s no one around when he appears in a booth across from the man who murdered the woman in the alley.
“Hi, Frank.”
“You killed Frank Scalzi!” Steve says in disbelief.
“I didn’t kill him, Steve,” Bucky says.
“What happened?” Nat asks, entranced, “after.”
“I lured him back towards the alley. He’d always leered at me at the club, so I knew he’d come with me if I pretended to be interested. And then she came for him.”
“They didn’t find his body for close to a month,” Steve says, wrinkling his nose. “It was August. He must have stunk up that alley.”
“And the woman?” Nat asks.
“She left. I don’t have her locked away.”
Nat beams, “I love a story with a happy ending.”
“Do you feel bad?” Sam asks. “You did lead the guy to his death.”
He contemplates for a moment. He thinks about Theo, Celeste, and Gabby. He thinks about Opal. How he came to realize that Frank had put them all in those alleys. How he got Frank to admit to it. “No.”
Nat is able to get a Quinjet and they’re in the air the next day.
“You alright Stevie?” Bucky asks Steve, who looks pale in his seat.
“I have a bad track record with aircraft staying in the air,” he says.
“Everything’s going to be alright.” He grabs Steve’s hand and squeezes. He loves this man so much. How is it possible that months ago he’d been wiped from his mind?
When they land, he sits frozen in his chair while Nat tells Stark to strategically leak the Winter Soldier’s whereabouts. Then there’s nothing left to do but leave the jet and he finds that he is terrified to go outside.
“You alright, Bucky?” Steve asks him.
“I have a bad track record with not being tortured at Hydra facilities,” he says with a smile.
“Some guy I know told me everything’s going to be alright,” Steve tells him. “I trust him.”
He takes a deep breath and blows it out, “Ok, let’s get this done.”
He leads them into the Silo. He listens to Steve, Sam and Nat discuss where they’ll be when Invictus arrives. Sam hands out the noise-canceling headsets, two each. He’s tense and wants to get this over with. He wants to go home.
Steve steps in front of him when he turns to head to the bottom floor. “Stay in contact, yeah?”
“I will. Promise,” he tells Steve.
Once he arrives on the bottom floor, he walks through the deserted room and sits across from the chair. The device that stole so much from him.
He closes his eyes and pushes his consciousness outside of his body, up past Steve, Sam, and Nat, up the silo stairs, and out the top. There he stays and waits, feeling the ghosts start to slither and creep out of their dark corners. He feels them strengthen, feeding off of his shine, and listens to Steve and Sam chatter on the coms. Otherwise, everything is silent around him. The calm before a massive storm.
His consciousness drifts until he begins to feel the ghosts brush up against him. He smiles. They’re getting nice and strong now. Nice and ready to end this nightmare for all of them. One of the ghosts hits the chair he’s in and he grunts.
“Are you alright, Bucky?” Steve asks.
“Fine. They’re starting to get strong enough to be physical. That’s good. That’s what we need.”
“Any sign of Invictus?” Nat asks.
He goes back to his spot in the sky and looks.
“Not yet. Remember, when they get here, let them get all the way down to the bottom. We want the ghosts to take out as many of them as possible before Invictus knows you’re here.”
“Steve has a shine, right?” Nat asks. “If they have a tracker, will they be able to see it?”
“I’ll take care of that. I’m going to push out a lot of shine when they get here. Hopefully, that’ll mask any of the shine from up there.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Sam asks.
“Then you start shooting,” he tells them. “I’m going back up.”
Outside the Silo, he looks across the darkened landscape. He knew he would end up back here again. Once he’d started to regain his memories and he realized what he was up against, he knew he would have to come back here. He would have done it on his own, but he lacked the resources and he needed a team. Or maybe he wanted a team. People to watch his back.
He drifts back down to the bottom floor. He’s only ever talked with one ghost before, but he hopes it works a little like pushing spirits along. Get one to buy in and the rest will follow. It’s going to really cut their time short if he has to negotiate with each one. Well, no time like the present. He opens his eyes and is face to face with a Winter Soldier.
Oh, this one is going into a tome, he thinks. He looks around but doesn’t see any of the other Winter Soldiers. Good, they were all Nazi scum anyhow. He does notice that the other ghosts have moved away.
“They know you’re evil,” he whispers.
“Bucky?” Steve’s voice comes through the com.
“Everything is fine, Steve. Just have to deal with an old co-worker,” he tells them.
In his mind, he prepares the tome.
“Come on. Let me have it,” he says, closing his eyes.
Remember, you have more power than they do. Once you’ve got them, you spring your trap.
The soldier attacks and Bucky snaps the covers shut around it and buckles the lock. When he opens his eyes, the Winter Soldier is gone and the rest of the ghosts have moved back towards him, curious.
“I’m sure you’ll appreciate him gone,” he tells them. One of the ghosts moves closer. Oh good, a spokesman. He’s more whole than many of them, which is a nice change from some of the ghosts around the room. He smiles up at the dead man, “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
Turns out, it does work much like herding spirits to the Beyond.
“Steve?” he says into his com.
“Yeah, Buck?”
“We’re in business.”
Invictus arrives. He watches as they move closer and closer to the Silo until they’re right on top of it. He can’t get an exact number, but it’s more than three.
“There’s more than the three of them,” he says into his coms. “Be careful. And make sure you scan with your heat sensors for any hiders.”
“Yes, mom,” Sam says over the coms, making him smile. Yeah, he missed having a team.
“Jarvis,” Nat says, “begin translating for all targets.”
“Affirmative,” comes Jarvis’ reply.
He stands off to the side, unhidden and pushes his shine out, trying to drown out the shine coming from upstairs as Pierce, Zola, and Rumlow come down first. The arrogance astounds him, now that he can look upon them in his right mind. With his own mind. Behind them comes a squad of fifteen, all Invictus. None of them familiar. He takes a moment to look up above. Didn’t even leave anyone with the plane running, he thinks.
“James!” Zola yells down the stairs. “James, we know you are here. You must be quite confused.”
He smiles. Oh yes, he’s so very confused so he returned to the only real home he’s known. He’s going to enjoy watching them die.
“You know I wanted you from the very moment I saw you in Germany,” Zola continues. “It was fate that brought us back together. Over and over again. And it is fate that has brought you to us here again.”
He remains silent.
“It’s not working, doc,” Rumlow says. “Hey, Soldier! I miss you in my bed!”
Don’t say a fucking thing, Steve, he thinks, and miraculously, the coms stay silent. Maybe Sam or Nat got to him first.
At last, they reach the bottom. He lets them reach the center of the room before he drops his shining back to a normal level. He smiles as he watches the ghosts stagger and lurch towards their murderers.
Jarvis, thankfully, does not translate the screams that are undoubtedly coming from the monsters around him. The Invictus begin to cycle. Pierce goes down first. The ghosts rip and tear at his flesh.
“Fish in a barrel,” he says over the coms, giving the order for Steve, Sam, and Nat to open fire.
Rumlow has started back up the stairs, looking on in horror at what’s happening around him. The men and women flickering in and out of existence, painfully dying, until only their eyes remain, looking around wildly until their last cycle comes.
“He’s mine,” Steve says into the coms as Rumlow flees up the stairs. Steve doesn’t even give him a chance. One moment Rumlow is there on the landing in front of Steve and the next moment Steve takes Rumlow’s head off his shoulders with his shield.
Nat and Sam circle the landings on their levels, taking out anyone moving towards the stairs. Bucky smiles. They’re finished here. Just one more to go. Arnim is cowering in the corner when Bucky finds him. He sees his mouth moving, but Jarvis doesn’t translate, all the sign Bucky needs that tells him Arnim is using the words. They made certain to have the words untranslatable as an extra precaution.
“Arnim, Doctor Zola, Doctor Z, Handler. It’s over now.” He slips a knife from its holder. “It’s funny. Your family being called Invictus. Unconquerable. And here you are,” he pushes the blade into Zola’s neck and holds it, “conquered.”
He rips the knife from Zola’s throat and watches as the man begins his own cycle. He watches all the way to the end and Zola’s eyes never leave his.
“Buck?” Steve says from behind him. Not over the coms. He looks around the room. It’s only the three of them and a lot of piles of clothes. He takes his earpiece out.
“The ghosts?” Nat asks.
“Gone,” he says. “Steve?”
His hands are shaking. His body finally dropping from the adrenaline high and using so much of his shine. Steve seems to know and is there, putting Bucky’s arm around his shoulder.
“This was easier when you were smaller,” he says.
“Saying the same joke twice. That’s sad Buck.”
They start up the stairs.
“It was seventy years ago. That’s long enough to repeat a joke,” he says.
“I think eighty years is the earliest you can repeat a joke.”
“You’re such a punk.”
“Jerk,” Steve laughs.
“Are you sure you’re alright with this?” Bucky asks him again.
It's been seventy years since their war and two months since he got Bucky back. He is ready for this.
“They all know where to find me if there’s a world-ending emergency.” He walks up behind Bucky and wraps his arms around him. “Are you sure you’re alright with this?”
“A trip with you around the country. No fighting. Just us. Yes, I think I’m alright with this.”
“Natasha sent me some nice places off the beaten path. Some in Vermont and a couple in Maine.”
“No! No Stevie,” Bucky interrupts. “Literally anywhere but Maine.”
“Like all of Maine ?”
Bucky nods his head enthusiastically. “All of Maine.”
"Ok then," he kisses Bucky softly on the cheek, "no Maine. How would you feel about heading out West?"
"West," Bucky says, leaning back into him, "West sounds good. You know what?"
"What?" he asks, while Bucky turns around in his arms.
Bucky smiles at him. "I have a good feeling."