Chapter Text
What line?
The soldier has no one to ask.
He waits, until the building is empty, until well past its closing hours, to go back into the room. The man with his face— he’s already got all his information. Name, place of birth, date of birth. None of it rings true. None of it rings at all—he doesn’t know this man, doesn’t know any of this—
After hours, it’s easy enough to slip in through the window and get what he needs. He does so. It’s a mission, of sorts, even if it’s given to himself, by himself. It’s a directive.
Because an asset without handlers is a danger to himself and others.
An asset without handlers is useless.
Still, he gives himself a moment. The white mannequin is molded to interact with the one next to it. Even as there is no physical contact, they’re connected to one another. It bends as if it was made to bend around the other one, very aware of its space in relation to the other’s.
The soldier goes.
(Two naked mannequins and it’s still obvious how connected they are, how vital the people they represent were to each other. The soldier is nothing if not observant, and he observes how the two are, together, in old footage, in photos, in the way Captain America knew him—
Claimed to know him. Believed he knew him.
They say Captain America is little more than outdated beliefs.)
Steve should, technically, be waking up happy.
He’s all in one piece. The country’s all in one piece. Natasha (probably) isn’t getting arrested. It’s a good day.
He doesn’t wake up happy. He barely wakes up at all. It’s eight—an hour and a half later than he usually allows himself—and he drags himself off to his run almost on autopilot. If he doesn’t keep moving, keep doing something, he’ll stop. If he stops, he’ll think. If he thinks, it’ll only be the same sequence: flashes of psychosomatic pains across his face, the smell of a burning ship, Bucky’s eyes completely cold and blank and unresponsive, except for a moment.
And, of course, whatever happened next.
But he won’t think. He does his run, hard, a hood pulled up over his face just in case. Twenty miles, and the hour isn’t up yet, so he settles into a walk, quick enough that his muscles don’t bunch up, but slow enough that he can stare at the sun rising, and will himself to calm down.
Every head of shaggy brown hair has him tensing up and turning around. But he wouldn’t know what to do, if it was him, anyway. He wouldn’t know how to react. How he would react. Would he throw a punch? Would he smile? Would he recognize—
Steve sets off at a jog that only stays a jog for five minutes, and logs three more miles before calling it quits. He legs it back to the apartment that is only his for three more weeks, and shuts himself into the shower in the hope that the water will drown out his own stupid, stupid stupidity.
He knows he shouldn’t be here, knows it’s a bad idea, tactical misconduct at the very least, but he has to know.
He’d called him Bucky. He knew how to read people, knew their tells. That wasn’t just a name. There was nothing casual in the way the captain had said it. Such fervor. Such disbelief. Such desperation.
It was fascinating. It was disturbing.
His handlers hadn’t found him yet, and they wouldn’t, until he wanted them to. He had time to handle this correctly. He had time to think it out, figure out his next move.
He has no excuse, then, for sitting on the man’s fire escape, waiting for him to recognize his presence. To see if he’d take him for foe or friend.
All he needs are answers. That’s all. That’s all he’s here for.
Steve goes from the bathroom to the hallway, locking the door behind him and going down the stairs two at a time, because he can’t stand to be inside, right now. The sun is shining. Too much is happening. His phone pings halfway to his bike.
N: Hearing done. Heading to coordinates.
He frowns. It doesn’t sound like she’s been arrested, but it’s Nat. He’s willing to bet she ran out on the hearing before it was done.
Meet you there, he sends back, and guns it.
At the cemetery, nothing is answered, but at least they have a plan, of sorts. And Sam’s a comfort—he smiles like he’s relieved at the way things have turned out, happy to have a direction, and Steve doesn’t blame him. It’ll be the waiting that’s the worst, then, but he won’t be alone, and he grins back when Sam does.
“I must have lost my mind,” Sam says, when he walks back to his car, nudging Steve with his shoulder as he passes, and Steve laughs.
“You must have,” he says, but Sam’s answering smile is small and fond.
They’ll be okay, Steve thinks on the highway, because this isn’t what they were trained for, but they’ve been through worse. They always bounce back.
When he gets back home—and he ought to stop thinking about it as home, since the month is almost out, and he along with it—he parks the bike and walks upstairs and thinks about how there won’t be anyone to say hello to. No Kate, because she, a) doesn’t exist, and b) is probably busy attempting to find new employment since he may have inadvertently lost her her job. He hopes.
He entertains the thought, for a moment, that she was HYDRA all along, but discards it just as quickly. She’d had a clear shot at him, and at Fury, and hadn’t taken either. He’d take a little hope where he can get it.
The only thing he has for company, then, is the creaking of the pipes. It’s not lonely, exactly; it’s not like he has enough free time to get used to the relative silence. But it’s a different sort of routine to readjust to, even if there isn’t enough time to actually adjust. He already has a small suitcase out, his clothes strewn across his bedroom in convenient piles. All he has left to do is toss them together and plan this out.
He walks inside and takes a moment to breathe into the air. The moving air. He feels his hair ruffle, slightly, in a breeze that shouldn’t be coming through.
He’s on the defensive in a moment. His best bet is probably the kitchen. If he can slide in, grab a knife, he’ll have something to fight with. He can just barely see the edge of the window from where he’s crouching, open and shadowed, as if someone is leaning against it.
“I guess I should invest in a better lock,” Steve calls out. It’s not as if they haven’t heard him come in.
It’s quiet for a beat, and then— “Yes.”
Raspy, hesitant. It doesn’t sound like someone who’s about to start firing. Still, Steve doesn’t like to go into unknown situations unprepared. He’s left a knife on the counter from the night before; he grabs it, then straightens up, tucking into his waistband and raising his hands to either side of him, palms down.
“If you’re here for a fight, you’re about a week late.”
“I’m not,” the man in the window says, and Steve doesn’t let himself—can’t let himself—think that it sounds like—
Bucky is on the fire escape, his hair long and matted, his eyes a little wild, dressed in the uniform Steve saw him in last, his navy blue jacket buttoned all the way up, his holster empty.
“James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky intones, his eyes fixed to some spot on the building next door, his lips barely moving. “Born 1917. Missing in action, presumed dead, 1943.” He stops speaking, his hands fidgeting against the lapels of his jacket. The uniform doesn’t fit him right—the metal arm has ruptured a few threads, and even his flesh and bone shoulder is too broad, now, for the jacket to fit around him comfortably. He swivels his head around to stare at Steve, unblinking, barely sweating in the full spring sun. “He has my face.”
Steve doesn’t know what to say. Not he is you, because that isn’t right. Not he was you, because what if he could be? Again?
Not you’re the same person and not I missed you, because he doesn’t believe in pushing his luck.
Steve takes a breath.
He blows it right back out.
It’s the Winter Soldier who speaks first. “Why does he have my face?”
Steve still doesn’t know what to say. What he can say. His bag is still half packed on the bed, the person he’s chasing is right outside his window, and the knife tucked up against his back is telling him that any way forward is going to be the wrong way.
He tries to smile. “You might want to come inside.”