Apostate - Bucky BarnesxOC

six: funeral

Steve reaches over and grabs his commlink, putting it in his ear and turning it on.

"Sam?"

"Sorry, Golden Boy, you're stuck with me today."

"Fantastic," Steve sighs. "Morning, Tony."

"It's actually evening here."

"Right," Steve grumbles. "I forgot."

"How'd you sleep, princess?"

"Terribly. I feel like I got hit by a bus." He pauses. "Any news on Barnes?"

"We got a hit in Romania. Someone ran a credit check on a James Johnson, came back with no credit score, no matches in birth certificates... nothing."

"You think that's Buck?"

"It's Barnes, or it's a homeless ghost with no credit score," Tony sighs. "To tell you the truth, I don't know, but we're following every lead that we have. A few days before everything went to shit, someone broke into the INTERPOL offices there. They took a file, and a shitload of guns and ammo from a locker. That's all I've been able to get from the server Banner and I managed to hack into."

Steve gulps.

"What kind of file?"

"A personnel file on two agents. Reilly Byrne and another agent named Mark Byrne, I guess they were married."

His heart is beating faster. This is the only evidence they've had that Bucky even exists, let alone is still alive.

He has to be alive.

"What was in it? You think they were Hydra? He was hunting them or something?"

"I won't know anything until I look at that file. All I know is that it was compromised."

"It's not digitized?"

"It is, but the whole system's encrypted, so all I can see are compromised files that I already had access to, thank you Secretary Ross." He pauses and Steve resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Aaaaand it's pretty much impossible to hack into anything right now with the internet being down because of— I don't know if you're aware of this, but we have a whole zombie apocalypse situation going on? Are you keeping up to date with that, Capsicle?"

"Don't say that word," Steve sighs as he puts his feet on the floor and stands up. He dressed last night and slept in his clothes. He smoothes out his shirt and pushes his hair out of his face as he checks himself in the mirror and grabs his boots.

"What word?"

"The zee word... just... don't say. It's ridiculous."

"Well, that's what they are, right? It's called the Z Virus."

Steve rolls his eyes, lacing up his boots. He hates that word, even though he knows damn well that Tony's right.

God forbid someone tell Tony he's right.

"You didn't answer, so that means I'm right."

Steve grunts as he laces his boots, the same way he used to when he was in the army. The wound in his ribs still aches, even though the skin has healed over and he managed to patch himself up last night. When he was hurt, Bucky used to lace his boots for him, his plump bottom lip tucked beneath his teeth as he focused. Steve pushes the butterflies away.

"I'm busy, Stark. I gotta get out of here. You said Bucharest?"

Tony sighs on the other end. He sounds a little drunk. Steve was worried this might happen. Maybe Pepper and Bruce can talk some sense into him, because there's no way he's going to listen to Sam, or as he's titled him, The Resident Shrink.