Prompt Post 1

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At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.

Update, April 22, 2014:
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Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 22

[lauralot]

"Вы были меньше," the Soldier says, because Steve no longer looks as if he'd only reach the Soldier's shoulder if the two stood side by side. His stature is now as it was when he wore the red, white, and blue uniform, but he isn't in the uniform. And his stomach isn't stained from a gunshot. He has no shield. The Soldier hasn't seen the clothes he is now wearing before.

Steve looks confused for a moment and the Soldier wonders if he understands Russian. He doesn't remember Wikipedia mentioning Steve's fluencies. He can't remember Steve's dossier at all.

But then Steve is speaking. "Yeah. Uh, да, I was. Do you remember?" There is perhaps twenty feet between them, and Steve does not move to close that space. He looks cautious and surprised and other emotions the Soldier does not recognize.

The Soldier thinks he should scan the location for others lying in wait, thinks Steve is too intelligent to travel alone. But he can't take his gaze away from the man. The mission. "Yes," he says, because he remembers the night with the water. "No," because he can't remember any of the life that Barnes had shared with Steve. "Я не знаю."

"Okay." Steve speaks softly and the Soldier finally manages to pull his eyes away, scrutinize their surroundings. "I can tell you," he says, and there is something in his voice that makes the Soldier think it will hurt to meet his eyes again, so he doesn't. "I can tell you anything you want to know, Buck."

"You couldn't tell me my name." The Soldier remembers that, isolated, lacking any context. He needed a name, he'd asked for one, and Steve had not been able to provide it. Steve hadn't been a friend then, but hadn't been a mission or a handler either. What else is there?

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," Steve says, and the Soldier looks back at him. His body has recovered from the injuries on the helicarrier, but there is fragility below the exterior. He is carrying some sort of pain and doing a poor job of concealing it. "You're my best friend."

"But you couldn't tell me," the Soldier insists.

Steve pauses and then begins stammering apologies for things that make no sense. He says he is sorry for not finding Bucky, for not realizing he had survived the fall. For letting HYDRA get their hands on him. He speaks as though the misinformation regarding Barnes's death from the Smithsonian and the Internet is true. The Soldier's eyes narrow and it occurs to him that the mission may be lying.

[Steve never lies]

But if he is not lying, it means the Soldier's mind is malfunctioning as well as his body. It means he is growing unstable and erratic and maybe he should seek out HYDRA again, allow himself to be strapped down and repaired. Now that he knows what it is to want, he knows he has never wanted anything less than that in the world, but if he is malfunctioning he is a threat to Steve. He does not speak and Steve falls silent, and the quiet seems to stretch the space between them.

"I saw about the cemetery on the news," Steve says after a minute slips by. "Figured that was you."

"It was wrong." From the date of death to the epitaph proclaiming Barnes as a great hero and loyal friend, all of it was wrong. He is not sorry. He doesn't know why he even thinks about being sorry; weapons do not feel remorse.

[I'm not a weapon]

He has to be one now, has to defend himself. The experience he thinks was called a dream is still fresh in his mind and the dislocated shoulder isn't a distant memory either. All the life he can remember is that of a weapon and the part of his mind that shouts "mission" when it looks at Steve is not quiet. Nor is the part that remembers Steve's arm wrapped around his throat and internally recoils each time their eyes meet.

"Are you hungry?" Steve asks.

He doesn't know that word. "Where are your allies?" He remembers the man with the wings and the red-haired woman. He has read about the invasion of New York and knows there are others.

Steve raises his hands as if to display a lack of weapons. The Soldier faintly remembers this gesture from missions trying to negotiate before he shot them. "Sam—you…you met him on the helicarrier—he's getting a hotel room. I didn't wanna crowd you."

"That's stupid," is all the Soldier can think to say. It must be a lie, even if it's from Steve. He is meant to be a captain and a tactical expert, but he engages an assassin with a near flawless success record without support? Near flawless. It could still be flawless if the mission continues to be so reckless.

"That's what Sam said. Well, he said "man, have you lost your goddamn mind," but close enough, right?" Steve is smiling for the first time since he's drawn the Soldier's attention. The Soldier thinks he used to be able to read the meanings of all the different smiles, but his mind is blank when he tries to recall this one.

It is exhausting, trying to interpret what the man is saying with both voice and body. The Soldier doesn't want to be exhausted, doesn't want to slip back into unconsciousness ever again. "I shot you," he says, a strange—sulky?—note in his tone, fatigue and urge to take out his knife rising. It isn't enough that Steve has to trigger memories and emotion and conflict. He also has to heal at an accelerated pace so he can appear at the least convenient of times. Though the Soldier is not sure there would ever be a convenient time for this.

The smile is gone from Steve's face and the Soldier almost feels contentment at that. "I'm okay," he says, moving to step forward before he catches himself. "It's not your fault, Bucky, you weren't—"

"You—" he hesitates, searching for the English word and coming up empty. "You вывихнул my shoulder."

The man's eyes go wide and worried, falling to the Soldier's right arm as though he thinks the injury may remain untreated even now. As if the Soldier would be so incompetent. "I'm sorry," he says. "I never wanted—I didn't mean to—"

"You had your mission and I had mine." And Steve had succeeded where the Soldier had failed. Steve slept in ice and woke as a heroic leader. The Soldier roused as a tool. They are both of them changed, no longer the children he saw in picture frames at the Smithsonian, but Steve has retained his humanity and the Soldier can find only darkness and programming within himself. They are binaries. He thinks that if they are near each other long enough, one of them will fall to pieces, and he thinks Steve isn't capable of crumbling.

Though the look in Steve's eyes suggests otherwise. "Bucky, you're free now." His voice is ragged, insistent. "HYDRA will never have you again. I won't let them. You—you don't have to see the world in missions anymore. You're free."

He's had several days of freedom now, each full of confusion or hurt or both. If HYDRA had not ordered him to kill Steve—and he could kill him now and Steve may not even struggle and oh how he wants to but he can't—he would say they were right about freedom.

"Come with me," Steve pleads. He has extended his hand as though that can bridge the space between them, and the Soldier wants to rush at him, close the distance, allow himself to be led, ordered, sheltered.

And he wants to crush Steve's throat beneath his fingers.

He remains frozen. His body is intact but he can feel it coming apart. "I can't."

"Bucky." Whenever Steve says it he may as well be pulling a new limb from the socket. "Can I walk over to you? I won't touch you. Please, Bucky?"

The Soldier says "Yes," because he doesn't dare say no when Steve is not shot and bloodied and the world is not going to hell around them.

Steve approaches slowly, as if assessing an injured animal, and the Soldier tries not to flinch with each step. There is a shake to Steve's hands and the Soldier thinks the mission wants to touch as badly as the Soldier wants to flee.

"I can help you." Steve's voice is light and soft and the Soldier can almost feel it caress him. "You don't have to be alone. The things they've done to you—I can help. We can help you. I have friends. Engineers, doctors—"

His hand lashes out and steel fingers close upon Steve's throat without squeezing. He hears the word doctors and the Soldier is back in that chair, restrained and screaming. It is only Steve's lack of response that keeps the hand from crushing. "You're my mission," the Soldier whispers, and the clarity that phrase once provided is gone, the nerve beneath exposed and raw.

"You didn't kill me in DC, Buck." Steve's tone hasn't changed. There is no worry in his face. He was always so sure. "You had clear shots and you didn't aim to kill."

"I'm not Bucky," the Soldier hisses through clenched teeth, and his hand tightens slightly around the man's larynx before Steve can protest. "I can't remember. I don't want to. Leave me alone."

Steve doesn't have to speak to make it clear that he isn't going to leave.

"You're my mission." His eyes are leaking again. The English voice is screaming and his hand won't tighten and crush the trachea beneath it. He cannot kill Steve and he can't let go because Steve will never leave him be if he does. He can't be Bucky, can't be James Buchanan Barnes, can't remember. He is a weapon and a danger and everything is falling to pieces and the Soldier is on the verge of collapse when the solution becomes suddenly clear.

The left hand stays in place, steadying. His right hand also goes to Steve's neck, searching. He finds the carotid artery and presses, cutting off the blood flow to the brain. Steve struggles, but he seems unwilling to strike Barnes's body again and the lack of oxygen and blood to his head are quickly rendering him unconscious.

"Don't follow me."

When Steve goes limp, the Soldier lowers his body to the pavement. He runs. Steve will be unconscious for thirty seconds at most, maybe less, but thirty seconds is all a призрак needs to vanish.

His eyes do not stop leaking as he moves.

Re: Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 22

[(Anonymous)]

Oh god. Everything is terrible and everything hurts. (To clarify, this story is wonderful, it's just everything happening IN the story that is terrible.)

Re: Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 22

[lauralot]

Thank you!