The Shock of Sudden Silence

Forgiveness

"Mr. Barnes, the Captain has requested you join him in the conference room." Bucky pauses his workout and instinctively glances at the ceiling.

"Tell him I'm on my way," he grunted, sweat dripping as he unwrapped his hand, the cracks in his skin already beginning to heal. He had taken to spending most of his days in the gym, and everyone seemed content to leave him to it. There had been a few conversations with Steve and Sam about the soul mark and why he had kept it private, but no one else in the team had brought it up. Not that he saw them much. They spent their days huddled in Stark's lab, as though staring at the screen and constantly asking JARVIS for updates would speed the process along. Not that he didn't keep track of the progress. Every morning, like clockwork, he would wake from his restless sleep and ask for an update. The answer the AI gave him never changed - no new information, no location.

He had been reaching out to a few contacts he still had, trying to see if anyone had heard anything. Nothing helpful had been reported yet. Deciding to forgo the shower, Bucky left the gym and entered the elevator, nodding to a couple guys on the ALPHA strike team. He had trained with them a few times, but the team leader Brock gave him an unsettling feeling. He could never tell if that was just him being paranoid or not, so hadn't said anything, simply changing his schedule. The elevator paused and Brock turned to Bucky, giving him a mocking salute before leaving the elevator, his team members sneering as they filed out behind him. Bucky was used to it. Once people realized that he didn't remember anything from his time as the Winter Soldier, they became a lot less fearful of him. To him, this made no sense. He didn't have the memories, but still had his training. If anything, he was more dangerous now that he had free will.

He sighed as the doors slid shut and it resumed its path upwards. The conference room the Avengers used was the top floor, the gym three below. Sighing as he exited the elevator, he wondered what Steve would want to discuss with him. It's not like they had talked much lately, but summoning him via JARVIS still seemed extreme. "Hey, Steve," he said as he entered the room, noting that Tony was also in the room. He looked frail, something Bucky had never seen before. "What is it, did you find Darcy? Is she okay?" He grilled the back of the chair closest to him, his fingers nearly breaking the leather. "No, Buck, we didn't. But Tony received an email today. With a video." Bucky nodded slowly, still not understanding what this had to do with him. Steve sighed, glancing at Tony before hitting play on his tablet. The video began to play, the screen behind Steve seeming far too large for the grainy images flashing across it. Bucky watched, frozen in place, as he killed Maria and Howard Stark.

***

Darcy hadn't seen Pierce since he had delivered his monologue in her cell. Now that he had explained the purpose of her being there, she had come to the conclusion that it didn't matter if she answered the questions they asked or not. She would still be hit, stabbed, electrocuted. And in the end, they would kill her. She was simply a pawn in their game, and she was tired of playing along. Now when she was wheeled into the room with the chair or the room with the padding, she simply floated away in her mind. She knew what she was doing was dissociating. It never pleases her captors, watching as she barely flinched anymore from the pain. Of course, this was also due to the fact that her pain tolerance had skyrocketed during her stay there. Her only hope anymore was that the Avengers never found her.

***

Bucky was on his hands and knees, trembling. A puddle of throw up was to the left, and Bucky wiped his hands across his face. "I didn't... I don't remember," he whispered, staring at the hands that had killed his friend. "How could I-" he stopped, shocked to find tears streaming down his face. He pulled himself up, still not looking at Steve or Tony. "I can leave," he mumbled, voice breaking. "I would understand..." his voice trailed off, eyes locked on floor. He heard Tony stand up, murmuring assurance to Steve as his footsteps slowly got closer to Bucky. Bucky shut his eyes, bracing himself for the hit he was sure would come. Instead, he suddenly felt Tony's arms wrap around him. He was hugging him? Bucky could barely understand what was going on. "Why?" He gasped, confusion obvious in his tone.

"Because you knew him too."

"You don't blame me?"

"No, Bucky. I'm so sorry you had to watch that, but I thought you should know. It hurts, but I know you can't remember" Bucky nodded, still not quite getting what was happening. Steve hadn't known what to expect either, and let of a sharp breath, relived that Tony wasn't angry. Tony pulled away, determination settling into his features. "There are a few things the video told us," he stated, walking back to the table. "For one, this video was an obvious ploy to divide the team. Making Steve choose between me or Bucky, sending it when its reached a month since Darcy has gone missing, it cant be a coincidence." Steve and Bucky nodded their agreement, neither wanting to imagine what would have happened if Tony had been angry.

"The fight would have been brutal," Steve commented, brow furrowed.

"Exactly," said Tony, fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard. "JARVIS is getting closer to tracking the bracelet, which is good because the email contained a Trojan horse meant to hack our system. If we were only looking at the email and didn't have the bracelet, we wouldn't have caught it in time. Now we can back trace it and, at the very least, figure out the general area of where the email was sent from."

"Sir," JARVIS said, sounding as concerned as an AI could sound, "I have managed to locate the origin of the email."

"Where was it?"

"Here, Sir."