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When the fight is over, there is only the harsh panting of Bucky’s breath in the returned hush of the valley, the cloud of it rising in the calm, frigid air. If he doesn't look, he could almost pretend nothing had ever gone amiss, but he diligently casts his gaze around, taking stock of the five bodies strewn about, confirming their stillness amongst the vivid scarlet that paints the fresh snow.
Weariness settles over him along with wry disappointment, the reaffirmed knowledge that no matter how far he tries to run from his past it always eventually catches up. He'd let himself get too lax this time, too optimistic that the damages left in his wake would finally be enough for HYDRA to wash its hands of him. Yet, true to their name, it seems there will always be cannon fodder to waste just for the sake of some day taking out their one stray wolf.
The risk is a looming threat at all times; it's why he never stays in one place too long, why he never–
Bucky stumbles as he takes a step to turn, the sudden bright flare of pain in his side overridden by a frantic desperation that chokes him until he catches sight of Helmut, the man frozen, wide-eyed but unharmed, still seated on the ground where he’d landed when Bucky had pushed him out of the way of a bullet.
The relief that washes through him takes with it the strength left in him, adrenaline burned to fumes that leave him unsteady, off balance. This time when he moves there is no distraction from the sharp heat between his ribs, his breath hitching as he presses a palm to the one wound that had not been intended for him.
It burns in a way that warns of the possibility of secondary damage if he aggravates it unnecessarily, the bullet having skated just shy of piercing his lung but no doubt nicking a rib or two as it had torn through the surrounding muscle.
Bucky doesn't feel an exit wound and knows with a surety born of too much pain and experience that the bullet is lodged somewhere beneath the plate of his shoulder, close to the surface there. It'll be a bitch to get out, safer to go from the back than the front, but he's both dealt with and survived worse.
Movement breaks his moment of assessment and he watches Helmut stumble up onto his feet, fists clenched as he starts toward Bucky, kicking up a flurry of snow with every hasty step. His expression is wild, agitated, and Bucky feels his brows furrow with guilt, lips parting to offer some kind of explanation or apology for the mess he'd dragged the other into.
He doesn't get a chance to utter anything at all before Helmut reaches him. One hand goes to his waist beneath the flare of his coat and Bucky’s too slow to move, too startled to even attempt to resist the way Helmut suddenly shoves at him with surprising strength. It's enough to knock him backwards, the other man following his fall smoothly.
The cold bite of a perfectly sharpened knife kisses his neck as his back hits the ground and Bucky has to force himself to still against the instinctive flinch as the impact makes his wound protest angrily, forcing the breath from his lungs. The pain steals his focus for a few precious seconds, and when his vision comes back to him it's immediately arrested by the furious twist of Helmut’s features from his place atop Bucky.
“How dare you,” he hisses, lips curled back in a snarl, eyes bright and acidic, cheeks reddened by more than just the bitter chill of the air. Gelid wetness at once starts to seep into Bucky's back and sides but it's less numbing than the confusion he feels at Helmut’s reaction, far too volatile even for this situation.
Something else is happening here, something more, something important , and Bucky struggles to catch his breath against it all.
Helmut says nothing more — verbally , at least. There's an entire novel unfolding across his features, a battle of emotions as vivid as crocus blooms in a sea of white, yet trying to understand the source is akin to trying to interpret a cypher he's never seen before and has no key to.
Heat bleeds like a brand from the squeeze of Helmut's thighs against Bucky’s hips and the bony press of knuckles digging into his sternum where the majority of Helmut's weight is resting, hand fisted tightly in Bucky's shirt.
When Bucky swallows next he can feel the blade dig in just shy of nicking. There is nothing to dictate the amount of time he might have left before he becomes just one more wellspring of vermilion amongst the surrounding carnage, and yet he remains as perfectly motionless as he can, gaze fixed on Helmut's face, attuned to every point of contact and the minute trembling as the smaller man works his way toward some final resolution.
Whatever the reason, whatever the outcome, Bucky has no will to fight this man, even just to free himself.
A slow gust of air brushes over them, soft as a sigh, ruffling the strands of hair that have fallen loose over Helmut's brow. They're warm russet in the pale sunlight, like his eyes, except those are flecked with honey and cognac that would sparkle in the light were he facing it. In the shadows they look darker, a deep nut brown, but no less mesmerizing as they stir a singular thought in Bucky's mind.
He's so beautiful, even like this…
In the back of his mind, a strange contentment starts to settle. He's exhausted from the constant running, from the fear, the guilt, the loneliness. If it's time to accept his fate, he would rather it be by Helmut's hand than HYDRA's.
The moment stretches out until Helmut finally shifts, and Bucky blinks placidly, wondering if this is it, the end of his pitiful life on the lam.
He lets out a long, slow breath, tranquil acceptance curling through him in the space left behind.
It's with no small measure of disorientation then, that instead of feeling the burning cleave of a fatal wound, he instead catches a brief flicker of helpless terror in those doe-like eyes.
Within the span of that ephemeral moment he finally understands, the pieces clicking together in his mind like a reset joint.
Bucky sees the resemblance in those wide, wet eyes, in the fear just beneath the fury that burns in them, in the soft edges of Helmut's face that even an oath of violence and death cannot completely hide.
He knows those features, has been haunted by them for nearly half a decade.
He'd been too cowardly to ever look into the identity of the boy and his mother, but now it no longer matters. In front of him is the past come to collect, an angel of vengeance more entitled than any other soul could ever be.
It’s almost poetic.
Bucky’s heart shatters in his chest, a hundred jagged shards that worm their way deep into every crevice they can reach. It's bittersweet, the way he comes to conclude that even if Helmut should somehow decide against slitting his throat, some part of him might just bleed out regardless.
He doesn't deny himself from reaching out, resting his cold palm lightly to the curve of Helmut’s cheek even as the knife presses more firmly in warning, finally biting into his skin enough that he can feel the warm trickle of blood slip an almost ticklish path down his throat.
Bucky draws a breath, suddenly afraid that Helmut won't allow him these final words, even though he knows that he doesn't deserve the courtesy. Perhaps it's selfish of him, but he resolves that to die trying is better than choking on them all the way to the grave, the need to confess burning in his chest like a pile of simmering coals.
“I'm so sorry,” he whispers, the sound almost lost to the oppressive silence around them and the loud exhalations as those three words visibly rile Helmut. Every second is borrowed time, no guarantee that Bucky will get out everything that has weighed on him every moment of every day since he'd so deeply failed.
He knows that even then, there is nothing he can say that will truly absolve his guilt or diminish the hand he'd played in what had happened.
It’s fully possible that the truth might only bring more burden than relief, yet he caves to the compellent urge to speak it.
“They weren't supposed to be there…”
It isn't exactly the truth, even if it had been to him, right up until the moment that clarity came too late. Bucky licks his lips and tries again, tries for something less hollow.
“They were never part of my mission. I wouldn't have accepted it had they been…”
Except that too is a deplorably pathetic admittance, a fruitless consolation. It would not have granted him any more innocence if he'd turned that blind eye, still marking him an accessory by proxy.
They had been wanted dead and dead they would have been had someone else been assigned, the very same outcome that has occurred even with him there.
Still, he'd tried.
He'd found them right before reaching his final mark, hiding in a side bedroom of the manor. The boy had been beneath the bed, trying his best to stifle his whimpered breaths, and when Bucky had bent to look the mother had leapt at him from her hiding place across the room, armed with a fire poker.
It hadn't been hard to disarm her, but in doing so carefully enough to not cause her any harm he'd taken a few hits.
He can still feel the phantom bruises where the iron had struck the side of his head, along with the same ribs that had now been fractured by a different metal, the irony behind it not lost to him.
Bucky had assumed they'd fled to the upstairs to hide once the main floor had erupted in chaos. Despite the volume of attendance his marks were only a select few men of significance, part of a larger operation with no need to waste time on wives or the staff or other bystanders.
No women or children — a longstanding stipulation of his that HYDRA permitted in exchange for the talents that had made him infamous, a ghost of death with a nonpareil kill streak.
It had taken a sharply barked command to startle the woman from her protective rage, but once he'd held her focus he'd quickly assured her he was not there for her nor her child.
“Stay hidden,” he'd told her in a hushed voice. “I will come back when it is over and signal you with three knocks on the door. Wait another fifteen minutes and then leave, quickly.”
It had been an overly cautious play, one that shouldn't have held any merit of necessity given that none of the other agents in the area had orders to neutralize anyone outside of the targets. But trust was not a freely given commodity, especially in his line of work, and the mother and child no longer had had the increased safety of escaping the building amongst the crowd that had scattered.
In the end, he'd been foolish to not pursue that caution deeper.
When Bucky had returned to the bedroom he’d found the door ajar and the bodies of mother and child laid across the center of the room amidst the still fresh pools of their blood. Their faces had been relaxed in death, their closed lids and tight embrace telling, and Bucky had been able to see the dried tracks on their cheeks that spoke volumes of their final moments.
The shock had worn off quickly once he'd caught the quiet chuckle from the other occupant of the room, a bitter anger slithering an oily path through his chest.
“What did you do?” he'd snarled at Rumlow, fury stoked by the cold smirk that had curled the man's lips as he'd leaned casually against the wall, slowly cleaning his preferred blade.
“Found a couple rats,” he'd answered in a sinisterly jovial tone, and a cold curl of horror had immediately bloomed in Bucky's gut even before the other had finished with, “Good job flushing them out, Soldier.”
The transparency of the moment had struck more brutal than any weapon. The two had indeed been targets, their files omitted from the paperwork in order to secure his acceptance of the job.
Like a recreant, he'd fled from the scene, the question of how many other times had this happened nipping at his heels.
Now, gazing into the eyes of the man whose family he'd only offered false comfort to, this grievous sin is laid bare. There is only one ultimate truth, and it tumbles from his lips in a ragged whisper.
“I failed to protect them…and they paid the price of my egregious negligence.”
Helmut flinches away from his touch and Bucky finds those same briny paths on his cheeks, traces the glistening of them up to red rimmed eyes as torrential as the sea. I should have done more, he thinks dolorously as he lets his hand fall away. I should have known something was wrong.
He’d earned this anguished existence, the nightmares and the never ending chase a self-inflicted penance upon having seen death as too lenient a payment to their memory. Not for the first time, Bucky wonders why he'd never chosen to bring the fight to those at fault, to set fire to as much as he could before the flames consumed him as well.
He should have. Perhaps there would have been some small justice twined with the retribution of his death if he had.
Ashamed, he lets his eyes fall shut. He’s said all he'd needed to, and now there is nothing more to offer than his life. If allowing it to be taken could grant any measure of an eye for an eye…
“Helm–”
“Shut up.”
Bucky shudders at the sharp demand, as raw and tattered as the cavernous ache in his own chest. A second unforgivable boldness overtakes him and he allows his hands to curl around Helmut's calves, the sodden fabric burning against the numbness of Bucky's fingers. The other man does not pull away, but he tenses and the knuckles against Bucky's chest press down harder.
Bucky forces himself to look up once more, his next words softly spoken, the kind of gentleness shared between lovers tangled together in the dim twilight of dawn.
“It's okay…Do what you feel you must.”
The knife at his throat trembles, catching further on his skin as Helmut's grip on it shifts, and Bucky readies himself for the quick slice of it, the ease in which it will flay him open, irreparably severing both artery and vein.
He doesn't deserve the memories that come, trinkets of an illusory happiness that had felt too good to be true, but he cannot stop them from playing out in his mind. The few weeks he'd spent with Helmut at his side had given him a peace he thought he'd never have, the pull of the other such a balm that it had briefly overridden his guilt.
Bucky feels the admittance die at once on his tongue. There's no place for it here, and he knows now that what was real for him was surely just a clever bit of acting on Helmut's part, a means to an end. Perhaps he would have never known if the others hadn’t come for him yet again. Perhaps he would have only known in the moments where his life was already spilling from him, unable to utter any response.
The blade shakes a little more, pressing into his skin a little deeper, and Bucky lets out another slow breath, embracing that his clock has finally run down.
Abruptly, the knife disappears, thumping almost soundlessly in the snow bank beside them. Bucky has only a second to blink in stunned confusion before both of Helmut's hands are fisting in his shirt and hauling him up as if he were a stringless marionette.
His mouth crashes against Bucky's harshly, splitting his lower lip with the brute force as their teeth clack together and Bucky's opens on a gasp. Helmut's tongue snakes out to chase the spilt blood before thrusting demandingly past his lips, one hand moving to yank ruthlessly at his hair.
Bucky’s grip on the other's legs tightens but he doesn't dare let them wander anywhere else.
He can practically taste the anger in the violence of Helmut's mouth, the bitter despair, the desperation Bucky cannot correctly name. He yields to it, lets Helmut do what he will with him, will take whatever punishment the other man has found fit even as it compounds upon the anguish in his soul.
Both of those fine-boned hands shift again, callous-rough against his skin as they wrap around the hinges of his jaw, caging his head as fingertips press bruises into the tendons of his neck and thumbs dig into the soft corners of his mouth.
A searing pain alights in the side of his upper lip as Helmut bites down viciously, tearing the flesh with one sharp canine. Bucky tenses up but does not attempt to yank himself away, and a moment later Helmut pulls back with a bloodied mouth and steel in his eyes.
He presses his thumb to the wound, something flickering in his gaze as Bucky winces but continues to remain in place. Then his face smooths over and he stands, looking as collected as if the chaos and revelations that had just occurred were merely a figment of a bad dream.
Helmut studies him for a lengthy respite, a stretch of scrutiny that suspends time, paralyzing Bucky under a judgment more avoirdupois than the mass of the sun.
“Your life is mine,” he says at last, and the burn of his bite flares under the words, as if Bucky's subconscious is acknowledging the claim, grateful for it and for the mark that will surely scar.
“You are not permitted to die until I see fit, and by my hand only will you cross into hell.”
It is a benediction, perdition and salvation interwoven like filigree into metaphysical shackles that had long existed beyond his awareness, ready and waiting to be brought into use by their rightful heritor.
Breath returns to Bucky's lungs, heart beating anew with permitted purpose.
Helmut turns his head to stare pensively at the distant mountains, tall peaks obscured by the hazy gloom of an impending storm. The suspiration that just as thickly fogs the air in front of him is an epitaph to a chapter closed, a new path opening as the final opaque wisps dispel, and without looking back he speaks once more.
“Get up. There is much to be done.”
The warmth of subjugation curls through him like the lulling end of hypothermia, and, clinging tightly to the liberation of it, Bucky obeys.