Hi, hi, fanfic followers! Next chapter of Nowhere To Go But Home is in progress and I have a teaser for you behind the cut:
It was an itch—nothing more than a twinge between his shoulder blades—but when Steve felt it, he couldn’t ditch the nagging certainty that something was wrong.
He tried, he really did.
Or, rather, he tried for the better part of thirty seconds before he ordered the Quinjet back to the tower. He was overreacting, probably. Worrying over nothing. He did that. They’d get back to base and there was a good chance he’d find Bucky asleep, sprawled gracelessly across a couch or a bed, taking advantage of the chance to rest. After their disastrous breakfast, Steve had, for once, needed the distance just as much as his soulmate—to be far enough out of range that they didn’t have to guard each other from unwanted glimpses of their thoughts. Now he was cutting their reprieve short, just because he had a bad feeling.
The closer they got, though, the more the itch turned into a twinge and then an ache. Steve had Clint radio ahead. SI security and SHIELD operatives reported status quo, but Friday cut into the transmission and requested to speak with the captain privately.
“Did something happen?” he asked the AI. He held his earpiece and did his level best to keep his voice low and controlled.
“Unconfirmed,” Friday answered. “Sergeant Barnes is displaying signs of acute distress and anxiety, with possible flashbacks and auditory hallucinations. My attempts to engage him have gone largely unheeded.”
Steve swore under his breath, his concern sharpening into splinters of fear. He reached out with the bond, pushing to make the connection despite the distance, trying to get a read on what was wrong. What came back was scratchy and hollow and jumbled and full of static—too much like the Winter Soldier’s mind for Steve’s comfort. He was still too far to be sure, but it didn’t bode well.
“Friday, don’t let him out of your sight,” Steve ordered. “If he shows signs of aggression, I want him locked in. Do whatever you have to to keep him away from anyone else in that tower.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Is Tony aware of the situation?”
“Mr. Stark is still under blackout in the lab.”
“If this goes south, we might need him.”
“Mr. Stark has rewritten my protocols,” Friday said, “but I can apprise him of the situation in the event of a genuine emergency.”
For fuck’s sake. “That’ll have to be good enough for now.”
Steve briefed the team, preparing them for the worst, and by the time Natasha set the Quinjet on the roof, Steve had worked himself into the focused, mission-calm of Captain America. There were too many variables, too many unknowns. Right now was not the time for a full-blown panic.
Bucky wasn’t on his private floor, and Friday smartly directed the team to the sergeant’s location before Steve could even think about tearing apart the building level by level to find him. Steve approached the door to his quarters on the Avenger’s level. Sam and Natasha had his back while Vision and Wanda waited just out of sight. Rhodes was holding a flight pattern outside, keeping an eye on the perimeter, just in case Bucky managed to fight his way past the rest of the team.
Steve steadily, cautiously, opened the door. He tried to get a read on his soulmate before he fully entered; but Bucky’d shut him out. Which meant they were going in blind, in more ways than one.
The lights were off and Bucky was slouched in the shadows at the end of the bed, elbows braced on his knees and head bowed. He was shaking minutely from head to toe, every tendon tensed.
Primed for a fight, adrenaline coursing through his system, it took everything Steve had to keep still and wait. “Buck, you’re scaring the hell out of me right now,” he said.
A breathy, caustic laugh came back. “Yeah?” Bucky muttered. “Me, too.” He looked up with glassy eyes and the light from the hallway deepened the lines of pain on Bucky’s face. He spotted Sam and Natasha and his expression faded into dull resignation. “Brought the whole team for me?”
“Depends. You planning on making this a fight?”
Bucky shook his head almost imperceptibly.
Steve signaled and Sam and Nat withdrew far enough to give them privacy; but close enough to be ready if matters took an ugly turn.
“What is this, Buck?” Steve approached the bed, wary. Bucky still wasn’t letting him get a read on his thoughts. Normally Steve would leave it alone, let him have his privacy, but he still wasn’t sure how much he was talking to Bucky and how much he was talking to the Winter Soldier. “What’s going on?”
“I felt him,” Bucky whispered, hoarse and scratchy. “I don’t know how, but it was him. An’ I’m not going crazy, Steve. I’m not. I thought it was you at first. But it wasn’t. It was him. It was just a split second, but it had to be him. And I don’t know how the hell it could have happened. It can’t happen, can it? I don’t know what it means and I’m scared as hell, Stevie. Things in my head are bad enough, I don’t know what to do with this.”
“You’re going to have to slow down,” Steve said. “I didn’t follow a word of that.”
“It was Tony,” Bucky said. “He came through on the bond, Steve. I felt him.”
That was a punch to the gut Steve hadn’t been expecting. Suddenly there wasn’t quite enough air in the room. “What?” he choked out.
“You heard me.”
“Show me.” And that was as close as he’d gotten to giving his soulmate an order since their army days.
“Yeah. Knew you’d want to see it,” Bucky mumbled. His jaw worked and he ducked his head, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his right hand. He was shaking again. “I’ll show you. Need you to see it.” He took a steadying breath. “Thing is, to show you, you’re going to have to see somethin’ bad, Steve. Really bad. I can’t separate them out. It all happened too close together.”
Steve knelt down beside him. “It’s okay, Buck. Show me.”
Bucky smiled thinly. “No, it’s not okay,” he said, steeling himself. “It’s about as far from okay as you can get. But you’ll know that in a minute.”
explodingcrenelation 