Steve and Natasha kept talking into their microphones, frantically, pretending to themselves that everything was okay. They’d asked Bucky to give them some sort of sign that he was alright multiple times and all they’d received was radio silence.
“He must just be too carefully watched,” Natasha suggested to Steve as she sped down the highway after the grey van, one hand on the wheel and the other to her ear. “Maybe he doesn’t want to jeopardize anything.” Steve stared at her. He had a bad feeling.
“Buck, answer me right now,” Steve demanded loudly. “I don’t care if they’re actually looking you in the face and will watch you respond to me, we can work around it, just tell us you’re-you’re-” Steve cut himself off, he was yelling, he was panicking. The van on the road in front of them was silent and Bucky was silent. “Something’s wrong,” Steve cried. “Go faster, we can take them over now.”
“We’re almost to the airport,” Natasha said.
“Natasha!” Steve yelled and Natasha grit her teeth.
“Sam and Clint are in position, they’ll be able to get to Bucky faster than we can,” she said.
Steve leaned back in his seat, his entire body tense, feeling for the first time in decades the inability to breathe. If Bucky was hurt, Steve would never forgive himself. If something had gone wrong, Steve would never let go. If Bucky was somehow otherwise impaired or traumatized or even mildly inconvenienced, Steve was already hating himself in advance for it. He had said yes, he had agreed to this. He was supposed to protect him. Yet again, Steve couldn’t measure up and Bucky paid the price. Steve wanted to hit something. He would never be able to make it up to Bucky. Apologies were already a moot point.
“Get us there,” Steve said darkly, gruffly, and Natasha let out a breath. “Fast.”
They followed the van through turns on the highway until they turned into the airport. Natasha sped as fast as she could to keep up. They watched in the distance, figures piling out of the van. Then Bucky, recognizable by the swarm of handlers around him and his missing arm, dragged out and into the helicopter. By the time they got close enough to even consider stopping the car and running, the helicopter was already taking off. Technically, Steve knew this was part of the plan, but he wanted to be on that helicopter with Bucky now. The sick feeling inside him grew steadily sicker until Steve felt consumed. But then there, of course, in the sky, was Sam, his wings beating, holding Clint, bow poised. Steve and Natasha stood outside of the car, staring up, holding hands in front of their eyes to block out the mid-day sun, and watched an arrow sail through the sky towards the helicopter. The blast it made with it’s attached explosives made a shuddering sound through the air and the helicopter dipped a little. Steve watched Sam swing closer and closer to the nice new door in the helicopter and drop Clint inside. Then, Sam came down for them.
Steve watched, his shield on his arm and ready, as Natasha reached up and Sam clutched her hand and pulled her upwards. It felt like ages as Steve paced, panicking, waiting for Sam to come back for him. When he finally did, he hooked his arms under Steve’s and hauled him into the sky.
“What could you see of the inside?” Steve cried.
“I’m not sure exactly what I saw,” Sam replied. “But it doesn’t look good.”
“Please tell me he looked okay,” Steve said.
“I couldn’t tell,” Sam said.
“This is all my fault,” Steve gasped. “We weren’t fast enough.” And then he was close and Sam folded his wings and they both dropped right into the helicopter.
Steve heard screaming, hit the floor ready, and saw Bucky across the plane-like helicopter. He was on that machine from his file, from the pictures, he was hooked into it. There were straps and binds around his body, his face was red with blood, his eyes were closed. Natasha was undoing the binds frantically, screaming at him.
“James!” She yelled in his face. He rolled his head, he looked like he was muttering.
“Oh, no,” Steve breathed and everything seemed to stop. No.
No no no no no.
Everything in Steve screamed. His being denied what he was seeing. This wasn’t happening. He felt himself rush to Bucky’s side through the flurry of arrows and bullets. He ripped off the straps, tore them right off the machine itself, and grabbed Bucky’s shoulder on the right, hooking his hand into his metal socket on the left, and hauled him upright. Hadn’t he known this would happen? Hadn’t he tried to tell Bucky? There was hot red blood smeared over his face and down his neck. Steve had no idea where it was coming from. His eyes were glazed, he was mumbling incoherently. Steve shook him, and not gently. Bucky’s head fell back and Natasha gasped and grabbed him. She was sobbing, he noticed. He was crying too, he noticed secondly.
“Steve!” Sam was yelling. “Steve, listen to me!” Steve looked over slowly. Sam was standing there, with guns in both hands. “We got them all. The helicopter’s on autopilot, we’ll be at-at where ever they were taking him soon.”
“Can we continue with the mission, Captain?” Clint asked. Natasha had her face in her hands. Steve looked back at Bucky. He was staring at him blankly. Steve remembered with a suddenness that he was a Captain, he was a leader, he had to… He had to lead now. Steve nodded.
“Can you two keep going?” He asked. He was breathless. His cheeks were wet.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“Bucky needs… Someone,” Steve said. He hesitated to say himself because clearly, judging by the state Steve had gotten him into, Bucky needed anyone but him. Natasha looked up, sucking in a breath, rubbing her red face, her hands and cheeks wet.
“You stay,” she said. “You help him.”
“Natasha, I-,” Steve started.
“You’re the person he needs,” she said and Steve shook his head.
“I keep hurting him,” Steve replied.
“You’re his best friend,” she cried. I’m a pretty shoddy excuse! Steve thought to himself. “I tell you, Steve,” Natasha insisted. “There’s nothing you could do to make James hate you. He loves you so much. He needs you, he needs you!” Steve looked back at Bucky and after a while, he heard himself give in.
Steve scooped Bucky up off the metal seat and laid him down on the floor, resting his head in Natasha’s kneeling lap. She kissed his head and wiped the sweat away from his staring and unseeing eyes as Sam and Clint helped Steve prepare wet cloths to wipe away the blood from his chin.
“That looks cracked,” Clint noticed.
“He was probably struggling,” Natasha whispered. Steve paced.
“What if this isn’t normal?” Steve said. “We don’t know how he usually responds to this, what if this is abnormal, or something’s seriously wrong now?”
“There’s no way to know,” Natasha said, looking up at him.
“How much did he even lose this time?” Steve asked and Natasha almost wasn’t able to hold back the tears again.
“I have no idea,” she whispered, her voice breaking. Clint kneeled next to her gently and she leaned over and threw her arms around his neck and Steve watched Clint hold her tightly.
“He’ll be okay,” Clint was saying and Steve thought that was the biggest lie he’d ever heard. Nothing was ever going to be okay.
Once the helicopter landed, Steve watched Sam and Clint leave. Natasha kissed Bucky’s mouth and whispered something to him and then, even she was gone. Steve sat on the ground with Bucky and put his head in his hands.
Then, Steve stood. He wasn’t done. Something was shaking loose inside him, an uncontrollable rage. He found a piece of shrapnel from Clint’s explosion, a long piece of metal, sharp and mangled, and took it to the machine Bucky had been hooked into. Steve took a swing, and then another, and then another, and then went wild, bashing and kicking and ripping and tearing the unit to pieces. When he was finished, the machine was unrecognizable, in bits, and it sparked and fizzed at the ends of broken pieces like a dying animal. Steve wiped the wetness off his cheeks and rubbed his cut hands on his pants and then he sat by Bucky again and wept.