Chapter Text
The rest of the day is an ugly mess. Karli threatening Sarah, Hoskins’ death, blood on the shield. The Flagsmashers get away, Walker embarrasses himself a third time. And Bucky thinks of Ayo, reporting his betrayal to T’Challa. He thinks of Steve turning on his television and watching the news. He thinks of Zemo, dangling over the black waters of the bay, asking him: Not yet.
He goes outside to breathe some fresh air while Sam talks to Torres, and some old muscle habit takes over, awakened by the smoke he had the night before. He pats the pocket of his leather jacket, and finds it heaver than it should be.
Inside is a lighter. A packet of cigarettes, squashed from the fight. A train ticket to Sokovia.
Bucky scowls at all of it. He squashes the packet of cigarettes even more, but it’s too soft, too yielding, to be ground to dust. And suddenly, he remembers the fight at the hotel. That split second gesture, Zemo touching his chest. No, not his chest. Pointing at the necklace underneath. Trying to get him to understand. But he must have guessed ahead of time that Bucky would be too thick to parse the message on his own, so he left the biggest, dumbest clue he think of. And a fucking train ticket. Bucky hates trains.
He should just call Ayo. He should be done letting Zemo yank his chain. Instead he fishes a crumpled cigarette from the pack and lights it. Takes three angry pulls of smoke, staring up at the grey sky, and then grinds the rest of the cigarette to a smear of tobacco and paper with the heel of his boot.
Sam comes out of the building. He doesn’t look happy, and what Bucky’s about to tell him isn’t going to make him any happier. “I’m gonna go catch Zemo.”
Sam looks him up and down. He doesn’t ask questions, just sighs. “I need to make sure Sarah’s okay,” he says, like Bucky, too, said that he needs to do this.
Bucky would like to tell him to shove it, but Sam looks too tired. So he just nods and tries to make a quick exit, but Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Buck. Take care. Come visit us when you’re done.”
The words ring in his head, repeating like the clack of the train tracks in the night. Bucky has an entire sleeping compartment to himself, and long, long hours to lie in the half dark and think about why Sam wants him to come to Louisiana. The nearest he comes to an answer is that Sam is too kind for his own good.
There’s another explanation. Sam isn’t stupid. If he were in Bucky’s shoes, he’d probably not have needed a clue as big as a Times Square ad to know where Zemo was going. And before he went on the run with Steve, Sam was some kind of shrink, too. Better than Raynor, probably. Maybe he knew what Bucky would be thinking about his meeting with Zemo before Bucky even started thinking.
Bucky knows what Zemo wants from him. But there are easier ways to kill himself, if that was all the baron wanted. Sokovia is his home turf, and who knows how many friends he still has there… no, not friends, loyal followers, men like Oeznik, his men through and through. They probably regard him as some sort of national hero, there, for ending the Avengers. It’s very easy to imagine, lying in the train car that takes him to Sokovia, the kind of loyalty Zemo might inspire. Bucky expects that Zemo himself will go down without a fight, but Zemo might be wanting to take one last super soldier down along with him.
Sam might be worried that Bucky would let him.
The train stops in Warszaw for an hour, in the middle of the night. Bright sodium light pours through the blinds, and Bucky loses the thread of his thoughts among the noises of people getting on an off the train, sealed doors banging, suitcases rattling along the platform. Announcements in Polish, arrival times and destinations, trains running late, but the words twist and become something different. Scraps of Russian, the old litany, lulling himself almost into a trance. Good morning, Soldier. Hail - he jerks his head to the side, banging it hard against the thin wall of his compartment. It doesn’t hurt enough to chase the words from his head, even as they keep repeating. Then the train rocks softly back into motion, and Bucky rolls onto his back.
He’s drenched in sweat. The muscles along his neck and jaw are locked in pain.
He thinks about his breathing exercises, about getting a glass of water, but he does none of those things. Instead, he thinks about killing Zemo. Shooting him, point blank. But perhaps Zemo would put up a fight, just to have one last dance. Imagines the crack of his spine as he breaks his neck, imagines squeezing the life out of him, the squishy crackle of his windpipe, like biting onto a gristly steak. Zemo wouldn’t appreciate that comparison, but that’s what it feels like, breaking cartilage.
Bucky laughs. It’s also a sob, and it must sound utterly unhinged, but there’s no one here to hear it. He doesn’t want to kill Zemo. He wants him to be right here, so Bucky could wipe that stupid smirk off his face with a punch that wouldn’t quite break his jaw, and tell him what an asshole he is for thinking that he could wind Bucky up and watch him go one last time.
And he maybe also wants to get down his knees in the narrow, unsteady space between the cots and suck his dick while the train hurtles onward. The idea doesn’t even turn him on, it’s just very, very calming. The image shifts, further down the line. What if the train wasn’t running towards Sokovia, but away. Away from it all. On the run, throwing his lot in with Zemo completely. He doesn’t belong in Louisiana. He doesn’t belong anywhere in the country that he once fought for. That country might as well have lost the war for all he recognizes it.
He imagines killing. Killing who? Karli, the remaining Flagsmashers. Walker. Those would be the first targets. No more playing pretend, scaring people without real consequences. And afterwards, in some expensive, anonymous hotel, there’s no reason not to do the wrong thing. He can almost hear Zemo speaking words that he knows he doesn’t need to make Bucky bend over and hold still, saying “good” in that low, hoarse voice of his, gentle, in Russian, in German, in his own tongue.
Bucky groans. He cuts himself off by grabbing his junk with his metal hand, squeezing hard, until it hurts. His hard-on doesn’t go away immediately, it strains and persists, mired in that fever dream of death and mutual destruction.
The train passes through tunnel after tunnel, winding its ways through a low mountain range. The sky above the trees grows lighter, revealing village after village, strung along the railroad. Bucky can’t tell where they pass over the border into Sokovia. At some point, though, he notices houses pockmarked with bullet scars, older than the battle against Ultron. Old churches, a vaulting bridge over a small mountain river, once beautiful, now there’s not enough money to repair it.
The approach Novi Grad, end of the line. The parts of the city that have been restored or rebuilt have that disconnected look about them, like the refugee center in Riga, places inhabited by people who were ripped out of their home, half their roots still in the ground somewhere. In between those parts, large areas lie abandoned, like untended graveyard plots. It looks like even after the Blip, Novi Grad attracted no migrants.
At the train station, Bucky buys a coffee and a stale meat pie. He washes his face with ice cold water in a men’s room that reeks sharply of urine, and then goes outside. It’s still a grey day, no sight of spring yet, and it’s hard to think those feverish night-time thoughts now. But he still doesn’t know what the hell he’s gonna do about Zemo.
There’s a tourist information center in front of the train station. It looks shut down, but there’s a map of the city in a dusty plexiglass case on one of the walls. It’s curling from moisture and partly plastered over with makeshift ads and fading stickers advertising a whole, confusing range of twenty-first century politics, everything from rainbow flags to neo nazis. In writing, Bucky can almost parse out Sokovian - it’s close enough to Czech that he could learn it with ease. The map, it turns out, was printed before the battle against Ultron, and doesn’t show the memorial.
Someone clears their throat behind him. Suddenly, Bucky remembers that he has a phone that can display maps, always up to date. He turns around.
The old man’s eyes are bloodshot, but his posture is rigidly straight. It looks like he had a night that was about as restful as Bucky’s own.
The butler’s English is stiff, and surprisingly British. “Welcome to Sokovia, Sergeant Barnes.”
Being addressed with his rank throws Bucky for a moment. He’d bet that’s exactly why Zemo gave the old man that tidbit of information. “Uh… Oeznik, was it?”
Oeznik nods. Without his master present, he seems more his own man. Bolder. He studies Bucky for a moment, and it suddenly occurs to Bucky that he must be about Yori’s age - almost his own age, maybe, even. If he’s been in the family’s service that long, he must have watched Zemo grow up - Zemo, and Zemo’s kids.
Parallel to these confused scraps of realization, the Soldier’s cold analysis tells Bucky that Oeznik is armed. A holster at his side, a semi-automatic hidden by his voluminous overcoat. His left leg is his weaker one, a bad knee, his hands look rheumatic. The most dangerous thing about him is his unbending loyalty, and the fact that he has killed before. And perhaps that Zemo would be very upset if Bucky hurt the closest thing he has left to a grandpa.
“I’ve been instructed to give you directions to the memorial,” Oeznik says.
“Great,” Bucky says. “He’s got a really high opinion of my intelligence, doesn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t hazard to guess.” So that’s a yes, then. “One does not leave a Baron waiting.”
Normally Bucky would tell him where he can stick that, but he catches the way Oeznik stresses ‘waiting’. Bucky’s family wasn’t rich. His parents’ graves no longer existed by the time he came home, with no one there to renew the plots, which was as good an excuse as any not to visit. “How long has been there?”
Some tiny part of Oeznik’s hard mask eases. He looks even more tired. “We arrived just before dawn. He could be well beyond your reach now, Soldat. But the young baron was always… sentimental.”
Bucky suddenly remembers that moment on the plane when he had wrestled Zemo to the floor. The heavy judgement in the old man’s eyes as his master ordered him to stand down. He feels a small flush creep up the back of his neck, because he knows what Oeznik means by sentimental.
“I’m not here to kill him,” Bucky sighs. That’s probably no surprise to Oeznik, all things considered, but it is a surprise to Bucky. “Just tell me where he is.”
*
He can already see the leaden surface of the lake between the trees when Ayo intercepts him. Bucky doesn’t ask how they got here just in time. For all he knows, the Wakandans chipped him, the way people do with dogs these days.
“He’s here,” she says. There is the smallest note of approval in her voice, for tracking Zemo down. Bucky decides not to tell her that Zemo is the one to thank for that. “This time, he will not escape.”
Bucky nods. He hesitates for a second, because it would be so much fucking easier to just leave them and Zemo to their business and go home. But this might be the last chance he has to do this. “I, uh… I got a favor to ask you.”
Ayo looks down at the gun in his hand. “It is not our king’s wish that he dies,” she pronounces, though Bucky knows her well enough that he can tell she doesn’t agree with T’Challa.
But like Oeznik, she’ll follow her ruler’s commands, whatever they be. There is a reason Ayo was better than anyone else at figuring out how to break the Soldier’s chains. She thinks almost like him, except she made herself that way, trained years and years to forge herself into what she is now.
“No killing,” he promises. “But he and I have unfinished business.”
The difference between him and Ayo, Bucky thinks as he walks out of the forest, up the steps to the memorial, is that her decisions, her will, are as unbroken, unyielding as her spear. They point straight, always, no wavering, no doubt. She doesn’t have to second guess every choice she makes, because her thoughts have always been her own.
Zemo is a lot more like Ayo than Bucky. She’s a sort of noble, too, by Wakandan reckoning, though Bucky put more stock into Wakandan ideas of nobility, at least until he saw the vials broken on the floor. Up until that moment, a part of him was sure that Zemo was no better than Hydra, than the Soviets who made common cause with nazis, than the Americans who did the same. But here they are. No manipulation, no lies, no subterfuge, no betrayal.
“I thought you’d be here sooner,” Zemo tells him.
Should’ve bought me a plane ticket, then, Bucky thinks. He holds the bullets in his left hand, where he can’t really feel their weight at all, just the slide of metal against metal.
“Don’t worry. I’ve decided I’m not going to kill you.”
“Imagine my relief.” Zemo’s decision is not an admission that he was wrong. If it were that, that’d make things a whole lot easier. And Zemo isn’t saying, there’s never been another Steve Rogers, until now, either, because they both know that’s not true.
Zemo talks about Karli. Makes one last play at getting Bucky to kill her for him. That’s what this is, Bucky is almost sure: Zemo trying to give him an order, a mission. It feels good to tell him no, to know that it doesn’t work that way.
Zemo, for his part, smiles at Bucky’s refusal, and doesn’t seem surprised. Like he only tried for old time’s sake, not because he actually thought that would work. Good for him. That gun isn’t the only one Bucky carries, and Ayo wouldn’t complain at all if he shot Zemo in both knees.
Bucky lets him hear the click as he turns off the safety. Zemo doesn’t waver as Bucky lifts the gun, though he swallows. He has brown eyes, soft. Bucky has never killed a man who looked him in the eyes like this, clear-headed, forgiving, relieved. Bucky’s hand trembles, ever so slightly. It never does. Never did before. I can’t do it, he thinks, before he remembers that the magazine is empty.
He doesn’t know if that refusal to kill is freedom, too, or a softer kind of chain, but he opens his palm, lets the bullets fall to the ground one by one.
*
When Bucky is done with the list, he tries to send it to Dr Raynor. He adds a thank-you note, like that will make the fact that he doesn’t hand it to her in person less cowardly. She calls him the same day. Her tone is warm, friendly, but Bucky knows a velvet-gloved order when he hears one. “We still have our appointment on Friday, James.”
The book is on her table when he comes to see her. She’s not good at hiding her emotions at all, and he sees the small, amused smile as he sits down awkwardly, even though she tucks it away. Bucky didn’t even think a normal person could humiliate him at this point, but the humiliation burns like a firebrand when she asks, gently, “And why did you think you should return this to me?”
The honest, true answer, would be: I didn’t think at all. You gave me a mission, I executed it, I’m returning my gear. We’re done.
Instead, he manages something like a grin. Cocky, charming, definitely not something that could be sold as a Halloween rubber mask. “I dunno, thought you’d wanna grade it. A solid C, huh?”
She shakes her head and gives it back to him. “This wasn’t an assignment, James. It’s yours. You should keep it.”
He should burn it, he thinks. Those lists are dangerous, if they got into the wrong hands. He should’ve burned the notebook the moment Zemo pickpocketed it from him, because someone else might do the same, and do worse with those names than mock him. But that’s his business, not hers. She’s a civilian. “So, uh… that mean we’re done with this?”
“You made huge progress,” Dr Raynor says carefully, and James feels himself plummet. “Far more than I expected, to be honest. You should be proud of yourself, James. Celebrate this victory. But this isn’t just about the court mandate. There is a long, long way still to go.”
He doesn’t really register anything else she says before the hour is up. Only that there will be another session on Monday, and twice a week for the rest of his life. He liked Sam’s advice better, he thought, because that was a clear mission statement: make amends. Serve the people you harmed. Work off your debt.
Therapy doesn’t feel like he’s working, or serving anyone. It feels like that story about the guy and the eagle that eats his liver. Atlas or Sisyphus or something. Except Bucky is both the guy and the eagle, and each time he sits down in that office, he’s expected to tear open that wound again and swallow down a piece of slick, black flesh. Some days he can dance around the real stuff, distract her with present day shit, but he’s really not that creative, most of the time.
He could drive down to Louisiana, but Sam is finally being given the official Cap treatment, being paraded around the country and doing his best to make the cameras face some hard truths, so Bucky would just be visiting Sarah.
Who is lovely, and can’t help smiling back when he smiles at her, and has two great kids. Sam would never forgive him.
He could call Ayo. Take a plane to Africa and never come back. He’s not supposed to leave the country, it was a hassle to not be arrested for doing so the last time, but it wouldn’t actually be a challenge to slip his reins. Find some use for me, he’d ask her, please. Let me be the White Wolf again. Let me make amends.
He could call Steve.
There’s a package for him when he returns to his apartment. It’s small and neat and addressed to Sgt James B. Barnes in slightly antiquated cursive. There’s no stamp on it, so it must have been had delivered… by someone who broke into his apartment, very neatly, without leaving traces. Bucky stands in his bare bones, messy living room for a long moment, every hair standing on end, his scars itching. A part of him wants to smash his fist through the wall. Another wants to burn the place down and run.
Then he looks at the writing again. It’s an old man’s hand, European. He realizes who wrote his name and rank, and on whose orders he did it.
Bucky considers throwing the package out of the window. Let the rats eat the Turkish delight or whatever the hell is in there. He drops it in a corner, among some other trash he hasn’t gotten around to taking out yet, and ignores it for nearly a week.
“How have you been sleeping?” Dr Raynor asks on Monday.
“Better,” Bucky says through gritted teeth, “must be my clear conscience, huh?”
He tries jacking off a few times. Tries the vicious, spiteful route, imagines Zemo in handcuffs, unable to get away. He liked it when Walker did it, threw that little shameless smile over his shoulder. Bucky tries picturing that smile growing slack as he rails him, showing Zemo what hurting him a little really feels like, and it gets him there, almost, but just as he reaches the edge, nausea slams into him, the image in his mind tilting sideways and blurring with memories. He can’t remember their faces, has blocked out their names so hard he couldn’t put them on the list if he tried. People Hydra wanted to hurt and scare but not kill. He crawls out of his sweat damp nest on the floor, trying to reach the bathroom, but the past clings to him like sleep, like he can’t properly open his eyes to shake it off.
He spends a few hours after that with his cheek resting on the cold toilet bowl, half asleep, his stomach empty and his body running on fumes, shivers crawling under his skin.
When he staggers out of the bathroom, he means to grab the package and throw it into the river, not to tear it open like a dog who’s stolen the bag of forbidden treats. There are no turkish delight inside. He doesn’t like them anyway, the powdery sugar made him want to sneeze, and rose flavor tastes like girly soap. Instead, there’s a pack of cigarettes, unopened. A book, the spine creased, the cover familiar. Tucked into the book, a letter. It’s still too dark in the apartment to read, and Bucky can’t get up again to switch on the light. Instead, he pats the floor until he finds his jeans, and lights a cigarette. Lies on his back smoking, tracking the faint, wandering greyness on the ceiling as a rainy dawn comes up. Slow pulls, making it last. It’s like a breathing exercise. One that’s gonna kill him slowly, according to everyone these days. He likes that about Zemo: the man doesn’t give a fuck.
When there’s enough light, Bucky picks the book off his chest and turns it around. Written by some German shrink in 1984. The blurb alone is enough to make Bucky’s brain switch off. He speaks German fluently, though it’s one of those things he’d like to forget, but speaking it doesn’t mean he’s gonna be able to wade through this drivel.
The letter is penned on cheap paper, and Zemo’s own handwriting is a lot less flowing and elegant than Oeznik’s. It looks like he just dashed it out, but there are no mistakes, no blots or crossed out words. It’s controlled, precise, deceptively simple.
I will not say that I hope this letter finds you well. I always preferred the beginning of a mission to its successful conclusion. A professional hazard in our line of work.
Bucky imagines Zemo’s smug face, and something in him eases at the little, presumptuous word “our”, rage smoothing away the sick guilt he felt earlier. It’s comfortable, like a warm blanket of hate.
Did you tear up this letter yet? No? Good. You will dislike the book, but anger can be cathartic. It’ll do you no more good than therapy, I’m afraid, but I’ve found that books are a man’s best company when he is alone. Did you know that the traditional reward for a debt such as the one I owe to you would be to gift you a piece of land to retire on? It can be done, if you wish it. Sokovia is a beautiful country. You are certainly old enough to deserve it, although I suspect that you will be no country’s citizen for many years to come. But for now, a book. At the very least, it might shorten the wait.