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The man from the bridge was on the side of a bus.
It had only been a few days since the soldier fished him out of the river, and he was sleeping rough in an alley when it drove by and stopped at a light. At the sound of the brakes screeching, he opened his eyes and saw it. And then, as if in a dream, he found himself stepping onto the sidewalk.
He stood, frozen and staring, until the flow of foot traffic moving around him became too much and he had to retreat. Now at the Smithsonian, the bus promised, the true story of the first Avenger.
So that's where he went.
"Bucky Barnes," the museum exhibit said, "Was the only Howling Commando to die in service to his country."
The man who did not yet call himself much of anything at all stared at the stranger wearing his face. That was true, he realized. That was exactly true.
The next time he saw Captain America, the fool was storming a Hydra base with practically no backup. This felt somehow both right and wrong at the same time.
The man with the wings was with him, but he wasn't wearing his wings now. The soldier watched from a distance as they approached the facility, then waited while they explored the inside, and then watched some more as they finally came out again an hour later and loitered in the yard. He could have killed them both easily from here. Anyone could have, if the soldier hadn't already cleared out every Hydra operative within a fifty mile radius.
Sloppy. Stupid.
He was irritated, the feeling curling through him with a familiarity that it was almost comforting. Steve Rogers had painted a target on his chest and charged into danger and the man formerly known as Bucky Barnes was suddenly certain that some version of him had been gritting his teeth about this very thing for far longer than his broken brain could comprehend.
The man with the wings took out his phone and made a call while Rogers stood with his hands on his hips and a face that looked like he'd sucked a lemon. This, too, was familiar.
"Maria's sending a team," Wings said to Rogers, who nodded.
"For all the good it will do," he said, and the sound of his voice shot through the soldier's whole body like there was a livewire running straight from Rogers' vocal cords to his spine. "Not much to salvage."
"You don't know that, man. Let the geeks do their thing."
Rogers shook his head. "If there was something there, you really think he'd have left it for us to find?"
Wings sighed. "You're that sure it was him?"
"Who else?"
"I don't know. But the last time you saw him, he wasn't exactly on the 'kill all Hydra' bandwagon."
"It was him," Rogers said, certainty radiating off of him. "He was here, and we missed him. And now we're right back where we started."
They were talking about him, the soldier suddenly understood. Rogers and the man with the wings were not here chasing Hydra. They were here chasing the soldier. The thought was discordant. It did not fit. Why chase a dead man? Why bother with a broken thing?
He watched until they got into their car and drove away. He looked at the direction Rogers' car had driven in. And then he went the other way.
The third time he saw Steve Rogers, the man formerly known as the soldier was squatting in an abandoned building. There were lots of them in this part of the city. In some places, whole blocks seemed to be decimated, while others were full of noise and construction. Aliens, another squatter had told him when he first arrived. Aliens from a hole in the sky! They'd demolished half of New York, and wasn't that a kick? Of course even the aliens in this shitty future were a disappointment.
This squat was going to be torn down in a day or so, and the others had abandoned it. That meant he had a filthy, rotting mattress and the detritus they'd left behind all to himself. A magazine next to the mattress was open. "Stars: They're Just Like Us!" it proclaimed. And above a caption that read "They take the subway!" was a picture of Rogers riding the A train.
Barnes ran his finger over his unsmiling face. "Brooklyn's own Steve Rogers rode the train like a modern New Yorker in June, 2015," said the caption. He was hunched over and staring blankly in the picture. He didn't seem to realize he was being photographed.
He looked miserable.
The next day at the library, Barnes sat down with a new agenda. Searching "Why is Steve Rogers sad?" led him to a comment thread entitled CAPTAIN SAD SACK, in which people had posted many pictures of him wandering around looking like someone had kicked his dog.
It was honestly a little depressing, and that really something coming from a man currently sharing his bedroom with a thriving rat colony.
It ate at him.
On the way home, the same instincts that wouldn't let him leave Rogers in the river had him detouring into a convenience store to pick up a burner phone. Back at the squat, he stared at it in slight consternation.
This was a bad idea. Potentially a horrendously bad idea.
For one thing, it should have been much harder to get the number for Captain America's personal phone. After the fall of SHIELD, OPSEC had clearly gone straight down the shitter. He would have hoped the Widow, at least, would have sense enough to lock down Captain America's comms, but apparently Bucky just had to do every damn thing himself.
Beyond that, he wasn't sure what to send, and after an agonized 10 minutes of indecision, finally shot off a directive to smile. Rogers immediately texted back WHO IS THIS? Which was just typical, really. The guy couldn't even let someone do something nice for him without trying to ruin it.
keep sucking lemons and your face will freeze like that, he typed, adding after a moment's thought, your security is shit also.
A pause. Then Rogers was typing.
Bucky?
A moment later, the phone began to ring. The soldier dropped the phone like it was suddenly on fire. He could hear Rogers' voice as if he were in the room, could picture the look on his face as though he were standing right in front of him.
He shoved the phone under the mattress and fled the squat, leaving the phone to be destroyed with the rest of the building.
The first time Steve saw him, it was at another Hydra facility, a remote facility in western Canada. He hadn't wanted to come here. There were only two types of people he was likely to run into at these places: people who worked for Hydra, or people looking to arrest anyone who'd ever done the same. The man who was trying to be James Barnes was keen to avoid both. But he'd been running low on funds, and Hydra vaults were easy to raid.
So he took a chance and hit this one. And then he wandered into the back and found a cold metal table with straps in a room full of tile and hoses and drains—blood, drains for the blood, and the water to wash the blood away—and a part of his brain said no, thank you.
When he came back to himself, he was sitting on the dusty tile floor with a stiff back and Steve goddamn Rogers standing in the doorway.
"Bucky," he said, eyes wide and blue. Barnes wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised. "Bucky," Steve said again. He seemed stuck. "You—Buck. You're here."
Barnes sat there frozen, heart beating too fast in his chest. "Here I am," he croaked.
Steve took a step into the room, but stopped when Barnes tensed. "I wondered if you'd left New York." He dug a hand into one of his suit's many utility pockets, and pulled out a phone. "You left this for me, right?"
Barnes stared. If the situation was less fraught, this would just be embarrassing. Criticizing Steve's lackluster approach to security while leaving himself wide open, like the greenest amateur. As if he wanted Steve to trace him, as if he—as if…
"I've been looking for you," Steve said, taking a step into the room.
"I know." Barnes watched him move closer, slow and cautious, hands held up non-threateningly, as though approaching a skittish street dog. "You should stop."
And then the soldier shot him.
Steve looked down curiously at the gutshot. "Bucky," he said, raising a bloody hand toward him. "It's okay."
He stumbled back at the second shot, expression unchanging.
"Come home."
The third shot sent him crashing to the ground.
"I don't want to hurt you."
The soldier stood over him, cold and pitiless. "I know," he said. "But you should."
Steve didn't move as the gun raised to his head, eyes wide and imploring.
"Come home," he said again.
The soldier pulled the trigger—
—and woke up, choking on a scream.
He bolted upright, panting and shivering. The early morning quiet was suddenly deafening with the sound of the gunshots still ringing in his ears, the last image of the dream burning into his vision. He drew in a deep shuddering breath, trying to ground himself in the present instead: it was barely dawn. He'd camped the night before, and there was a thin layer of dew mixed with the sweat on his face. The remote road was otherwise empty, just grass, trees, and mountains looming in the distance.
For one wild moment, he considered losing himself in them. Leaving the bike and walking off into the wilderness and never coming back. It seemed fitting. Half a world away, Bucky Barnes had died in mountains like these once.
Steve thought he had survived. But the man Steve wanted would have put a gun in his own head before he raised one to Steve's. The man he was chasing wouldn't be running in the first place. He wouldn't need to, because he wasn't this tattered shadow of a person, a blight on everything he touched.
Wetness on his cheeks—he was crying. He didn't want to, but his body did it for him anyway. Just another in a long line of betrayals. His mind betrayed him daily, and now his body—the one thing that could usually be counted on to do what he wanted—had started to betray him too.
What was the point, if he couldn't be that man again? What was he even doing? He wasn't Barnes. He certainly wasn't Bucky. He wasn't even the soldier anymore. At least when he had been, it had been simpler. No choices, no doubts. Those things were the domain of people, and the soldier hadn't been one.
The soldier didn't panic (until he did) and he didn't feel pain (all the time all the time all the time). He endured. He obeyed. If he could just obey Steve, then maybe everything would be easier. But his stupid, treacherous body couldn't even allow him that, sending him fleeing at the very thought of him.
The injustice of it landed hard and solid in his chest. That feeling was grounding, at least, and he sat with it until his breathing had evened out.
When it finally passed, he sat up straight, swiped his hand across the hot, angry tears running down his cheeks, and began methodically packing up his meager campsite. The sound of the bike starting startled a pair of birds. They burst out of the trees with twin squawks, spiraling up into the sky, and he watched them until they disappeared.
Then he turned the bike back onto the road.
When it finally happened, getting caught by Steve felt almost like an inevitability.
They locked eyes across the shabby apartment in Bucharest, and he just knew: there had never really been a chance of escaping. He'd thought that if he couldn't be the soldier, and he couldn't be James Barnes, then maybe he could at least be something else. Something new. A quiet man living a quiet life, who did odd jobs and went to the market on Thursdays.
He should have known better.
Steve's eyes slid up and down, taking in his gloved hand, baseball cap, and worn civilian clothes.
"Do you know me?"
"You're Steve," he told him, too tired to lie but also too exhausted to tell the truth. "I read about you in a museum."
There were muffled noises in the hallway, footsteps on the roof. The sound of many heavily armed men trying to be quiet. He should run; he had plans for this, plans and contingencies upon plans and contingencies.
Instead, he stayed, caught by the desperation in Steve's eyes.
"You pulled me from the river," he said, urgent. As if this was somehow the most important question with a SWAT team right outside the door. "Why?"
He couldn't look at him. Couldn't look away from him. "I don't know," he said, and whatever face he was making must have really been something, because Steve straightened, face hardening with certainty.
"Yes, you do."
Well, that figured. Bucky Barnes never could lie to Steve worth a damn either.
In the end, he still fought (it was always a fight) and still ran, and still got caught. An inevitability. Only this time, Steve had been caught with him.
Maybe that was an inevitability too. He'd spent so long running, he'd forgotten this truth: Steve Rogers didn't give up. He would always come for Bucky Barnes, no matter what he called himself or what he'd done.
"Do you know where you are, James?" the psychiatrist asked him with a faux gentleness not reflected in his ice cold eyes.
The man who'd been running for too long looked up. And he finally gave in.
"My name is Bucky."