[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: Yes, we used to say the pledge with our hands out in what closely resembles a Nazi salute. It's kinda unfortunate in retrospect. Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 13 Author:yuuo Word Count: 3806 Summary:It was about one-thirty in the morning before Bucky gave up on sleeping and sat up, hoping that being upright would help his thoughts sort themselves out.
It was about one-thirty in the morning before Bucky gave up on sleeping and sat up, hoping that being upright would help his thoughts sort themselves out. He really needed to talk to Steve, but Steve had been tired and fallen asleep almost as soon as he'd laid down, and Natasha had only been in bed by that time long enough for Steve to have used the bathroom after she cleared out from her own routine. Which meant that there'd been a three minute span between Natasha going to bed and Steve falling sound asleep.
So Bucky had laid there, not sure if he hated himself for sleeping so much earlier, or if he knew better, that he'd be awake right then regardless.
Beside him, he heard Steve shifting around, and glanced over just in time to see Steve lifting his head and looking over at him. "Can't sleep?" Steve asked.
"Didn't mean to wake you," Bucky said, avoiding answering. He wanted to talk to Steve, but he also wanted Steve to go back to sleep, because Steve got cranky when he was deprived of sleep when it wasn't strictly necessary.
Steve blinked at him a couple times, then took in a deep breath, shifting around to face Bucky instead of laying with his back to him. "All right, talk to me. Something's on your mind."
"How do you know I'm not just restless because I slept too much earlier?" Bucky asked, giving Steve a chance to go back to sleep before Bucky grabbed his ear and held it for awhile.
"Because I've seen you after you have naps like that," Steve said. "They don't usually interfere with your ability to sleep at night. So what's going on?"
Bucky looked away, not really at anything, just not at Steve. "Do you remember the pledge we used to say in school?"
"What, the Pledge of Allegience?" Steve asked, sounding deeply confused. "Yeah, sure. Why?"
"'One nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all,'" Bucky recited as if he were still in grade school, saluting the flag. "They've changed things since then, haven't they? They don't salute anymore."
Steve made an amused noise. "Well, it turned out that the Nazis liked our salute so much that they copied it, so we had to find something different."
Bucky knew he was about to trap Steve into something he knew damn well Steve wouldn't want to be trapped into agreeing to, and Steve would argue anyway, and Bucky felt horrible about it. He didn't like playing Steve like that, but he knew he wasn't going to win any other way. Steve was more stubborn than Bucky was; if Bucky didn't play his cards just right, he'd lose. "Tell me, does Captain America still believe in that 'and justice for all' thing?"
Steve went silent for the longest twenty seconds in the world. "Bucky, what are you getting at?"
"Answer the question, Steve," Bucky said, still not looking over at him. If Steve didn't answer the way Bucky hoped he would, he'd have to come up with something else, and quickly, and he couldn't do that while looking Steve in the eye.
Steve sat up next to him, Bucky could see him just out of the corner of his peripheral vision. "Well, I don't think we're very good at it, but yeah, the idea of it. Why?"
Bucky looked down at his mismatched hands. The hands of a weapon, an assassin, a killer and little else. "Then Captain America knows the Winter Soldier has to turn himself in." He looked over at Steve, already ready to argue when Steve would inevitably protest.
Steve looked like- well, no, not like Bucky had just punched him, he'd made a different face when that had happened, but a sort of frightened disbelief was there. "Bucky, if you turn yourself in, you know there's a damn good chance you'd never see the light of day again. I'm not going to let you throw yourself into a prison for the rest of our lives."
"Steve, I can't run forever," Bucky said. He looked down at his hands again. He didn't think he'd ever get the metal hand to stop smelling of gunpowder to him."I found something, while I was reading about the Vietnam War. There was something called the Winter Soldier hearings. I don't know how they ended up with the same name that Hydra gave me, but it was a bunch of soldiers owning up to things they'd done in Vietnam, and calling out other soldiers for their crimes. They got it from one of Paine's writings. The spring soldier runs when the war gets difficult, but the winter soldier doesn't." He looked back over at Steve. "I can't run, Steve, I've been running for two years. That's not who I am, you know that."
Steve looked like he desperately wanted to argue, but couldn't, not entirely, but he'd sure as hell try. "All right, fine, turn in the Winter Soldier, justice is served. What about justice for Bucky Barnes? You're going to rot away in a prison for crimes that you're not anymore guilty of than a gun is guilty of murder?"
Bucky snorted. "Not intending on it, no. You know it's Hydra that's been releasing these, right?"
"I had a feeling," Steve said. "I didn't know how many rumors there actually were out there, though. Natasha didn't give me details. But why now? You've been back in the public light for a year and a half, why wait until now to start throwing you under the bus?"
"Because now their accusations will be believed," Bucky said. "You heard Carter last night. The CIA was operating under the assumption that I was borrowing the name, that it was impossible that I had any connection with the ghost assassin. If Hydra released those targets before now, nobody would believe them, and I could just change my working name and it'd amount to shit. But now that it's believable that the Winter Soldier is that old, and it answers the question of what I've been doing all this time, it criminalizes Bucky Barnes, and Steve Rogers, too, for harboring me. And for running. I may be in more shit with the Army because I'm AWOL and you're not, but they're still going to have to deal with the fact that you took a wanted criminal and ran and hid him."
Steve looked like he hadn't considered that, and he was not happy with himself for it. "You know they're not going to jail Captain America. They didn't even put Natasha in prison, and they had her on Capitol Hill."
Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Then why are you so certain that they'll lock me away forever? I'm Captain America's best friend, if they found arresting Romanov problematic, they'd have fun with me."
For a second, Steve didn't seem to know how to respond, then he looked annoyed that Bucky had just verbally danced around him. "All right, so we turn in the Winter Soldier, let the government decide if they want to press charges or not. And if they do? Hydra gets away with murder. And then where's the justice for Bucky, huh?"
Bucky couldn't help the self-satisfied little smile on his face at that. "I'm taking Hydra with me," he said. "We have their records of the Winter Soldier Project. Every dirty little secret about their best weapon and how it was made and it's getting turned in as evidence."
Steve didn't answer right away, not looking as confident as Bucky was trying to make himself feel. "You didn't want that to become public."
Bucky finally looked away, back to studying his hands. "I don't. I don't like the idea of people knowing what they did to me, but they already know what I was turned into, might as well make sure they understand how it was done. I may not be able to look anyone in the eye again, but-" He frowned, trying to figure out what words he wanted to use. "Without that file, I'll be considered a wanted criminal. That file gives me a shot at being classified as the longest-held POW in history. They won't hold a POW in federal prison for something he had no control over. Not without pissing off a lot of people."
"Assuming the government lets anyone know," Steve pointed out. "We only have one copy of that, Bucky, unless we get the copy that we both know Tony has made for himself."
Bucky shook his head. "I don't think we can count on Tony in this," he said. "We'll make a digital copy and send it to Carter. She said they're already trying to cover our tracks, which means they're on our side. If whoever this file gets turned over to decides to try to keep it quiet, Carter and her team can sink that idea like the Titanic."
"You've been thinking about this awhile," Steve said.
Bucky knew he'd won the argument. "Since a little while before you and Natasha got back with the groceries." He flexed his metal fingers, feeling the buzz of the nerve response in what was left of his arm under the computers and metal, in the shoulder and chest girdle and up into his neck and brain. He looked over at Steve. "So are you with me on this?"
"To the end of the line," Steve said without a microsecond of hesitation. Then he sighed. "I don't have to like it, though."
"Not asking you to," Bucky said. "I don't like it either. But if I don't do this, if I just keep running, I'm letting Hydra control me again."
That reason seemed to make more sense to Steve, who looked like he suddenly had fewer reservations about the plan. "Which won't happen," he said. "Anything else lurking in that thick skull of yours that you need to talk about?"
Bucky shook his head. "No. I didn't mean to wake you, I figured I'd just make some really lame and obvious excuse to get out of here and talk to you in private tomorrow, but this works. Go to sleep."
"You promise you're not going to kick me tonight?" Steve asked.
"I didn't kick you last night," Bucky said, frowning at Steve.
Steve suddenly looked like a giant grinning asshole. "No, but you were cuddling."
Bucky reached over and shoved at Steve. "You're a punk."
Steve chuckled. "Jerk. Come on, let's get some sleep. I'm not sure how much longer we're going to have a comfortable bed to sleep in, if you're dragging us somewhere to be arrested."
"I'm not dragging us anywhere," Bucky said, scooting down on the bed a bit to lay down without his head resting on the back of the couch. "We're walking willingly down the Green Mile."
"You make it sound depressing," Steve said, laying back down and turning on his side away from Bucky. "Now go to sleep."
"Yes, Captain," Bucky said, curling up on his right side, the weight of his left arm resting on his side like a comfortable security blanket.
He wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but he woke up to the feeling of someone pushing on his left shoulder, rocking the rest of him forward slightly. He opened his eyes and looked back at Steve, silently demanding an answer to why he was disturbing his sleep.
"'s morning," Steve said, covering his mouth as he yawned.
Bucky lifted his head and looked around. Natasha's bedroom door was still closed, and the apartment had no windows, so with the lights off, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. "How can you tell?"
Steve motioned to the kitchen area. "Her coffee maker just turned on. Unless she set that to go off during the night, the sun's probably up."
"Damnit." Bucky flopped his head back down on the pillow. "Can I just say that I'm jealous of the fact that coffee does anything for her?"
"You and me both," Steve said, then nudged Bucky again. "Get up. You've slept about twenty hours in the last thirty-six. You're going to get a headache from too much sleep."
"Meh," was his petulant reply, but he sat up, rubbing at his eyes to get the crusted sleep out of them. He stared blankly in the direction of the bathroom and bedroom, his eyes unfocused and sleep still fogging his brain. His mind was trying to draw some sort of connection between those two rooms, but he wasn't sure- "I'm taking a shower before she gets up," he said, finally figuring out what the hell his brain had been trying to tell him. "You get breakfast duty today."
Steve gave him a grumpy look. "Then you're taking KP, right?"
"Hell, no," Bucky said, crawling off the bed and digging into his bag. Steve and Natasha had done laundry while Bucky was asleep the day before, and Steve had shoved Bucky's clean clothes in haphazardly, instead of in the vaguely organized way that Bucky usually packed in, so it took a minute to find a set of clothes to change into. Not that he had a lot of variety, although he noticed that he now had a red shirt with a white 'N' on it that hadn't been there before, but it was the principle of the matter. He looked back at Steve. "She can do it."
"You're such a gracious guest," Steve said, rubbing his hands over his face. "Let me use the bathroom before you hog it," he said, getting up, scratching at his left cheek. Sometimes Bucky envied him the ability to do that without having to reach his far arm across to do it. Blunt metal fingers weren't particularly good at scratching an itch. But it was a very minor thing, so it usually warranted nothing more than a brief notice, then shoved aside.
He'd almost dozed off again sitting up by the time Steve came back out, and it'd probably taken him all of a minute at most. Bucky wanted to go back to sleep. He pried his eyes open at the sound of the bathroom door opening, saw that it was Steve and that Natasha hadn't woken up in the short time Bucky's brain had fuzzed up again, then moved quickly to claim the bathroom before Natasha could wake up.
Mercifully, the hot water woke him up, enough that he felt impatient to get on with the day once he'd left the bathroom. But Steve still needed to shower, and Natasha needed to get her butt out of bed and be useful for awhile. But if Bucky was honest with himself, there wasn't much to get on to. They had to contact Sharon, get a copy of the Winter Soldier Project file to her, which shouldn't be hard with the nice set up that Natasha had, and then figure out where to go from there. But he knew they wouldn't be leaving that day, travel- non-emergency travel, at any rate -required at least a bit of forethought.
And he had a feeling that Natasha might make them stay and help her get through the massive amount of food she had to buy to keep up with two grown males with accelerated metabolism. It would be rude of them to dump a bunch of food she couldn't eat before it rotted on her.
Without anything else to do- and hell if he was going to start on breakfast, he made dinner, damnit -he sat down on the bed with his book. He really wished there was somewhere other than the bed to sit, and maybe a closer light source than the overhead. There was a lamp on Natasha's desk, but he knew he was just going to be kicked out of that spot when Natasha got up, so there wasn't much point. She wasn't going to be allowed to sleep that much longer anyway.
Natasha had shuffled out of her bedroom a few minutes before Steve was done with his shower. She was in her dark red robe that looked like it'd seen better days, with her hair in a halo of messy bedhead, and she looked like she wasn't entirely awake. What was with the people in that apartment being grouchy in the morning? They were all a pleasant lot to look at.
"I'd say good morning, but you look like you'd rather hide under your covers for another hour," Bucky said, sparing her a glance.
She looked at him. "Who said you two get my bathroom before me?" she demanded.
He set his book down. "We got up before you. If you wanted it first, you should've gotten up earlier. Welcome to sharing one bathroom with other people."
She yawned, tugging her robe tighter around her. "Didn't your mothers teach you to let the ladies go first?"
"Hell, no," he said. "I learned to never let the woman go first when it comes to the bathroom. You females get in there and you never come back out. Especially those of you with long hair."
She suddenly looked amused. "Your sister, or your mother?"
Bucky made a very unhappy face. "My sister. I hate the sound of hair dryers now because of her."
"Never get married, James," Natasha said, trying to laugh and yawn at the same time. "Or cohabitate."
Bucky glanced at the bathroom door as Steve came out, hair still wet and not styled, but he otherwise looked ready to face the day. Bucky pointed at him. "He's a bad enough roommate, I don't need a woman making things worse."
Steve paused, looking between them, then immediately bee-lined for the kitchen. "I'm getting out of the middle of this," he said.
Natasha laughed, watching Steve. "Smart man," she told him, then went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Steve stuck his head into the fridge, digging around for breakfast. "So what the hell brought up female roommates between you two?" he asked. "Or am I safer not knowing?"
"Eh. She told me not to get married because I don't like sharing a bathroom with females. They take too long in there."
"Rebecca ruined you," Steve said, setting some food down on the counter before starting to search the cupboards. He frowned, glancing back at Bucky. "Do you think she has a waffle iron?"
Bucky shrugged and motioned to the bathroom. "Why don't you ask her when she gets out at about noon?"
Steve gave him a tired look. "You know, for someone who likes women so much, you sure like to grouse about them."
"I like looking. I like dancing. I like kissing. I do not like having to fight with one for the damn bathroom in the morning," Bucky said. "You did not live with a little sister, you wouldn't understand."
"At least you didn't live with her when she was a teenager," Steve pointed out, still searching the cupboards, for what, Bucky didn't even know at that point.
"I might've had to do something rash if I had," Bucky said.
"What're you looking for?" Natasha's voice interrupted them. She was standing outside of the bathroom, still in her robe but looking otherwise presentable for the day. Bucky was impressed; that didn't take her nearly that long.
Steve looked over at her. "Huh? Oh, I'm looking to see what kind of pans you have around here. You have more than just that one skillet, right?"
"Bottom cupboard, to the right of the dishwasher," she said. She looked down at herself. "We don't have to go out today, do we?"
Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Technically, no," he said. "But unless you want to contact Agent Carter in your fuzzy robe and pajamas, you should probably get dressed."
Natasha looked like she was seriously considering that. "She's a woman, she understands."
Bucky wasn't sure what Sharon would understand that would justify staying in her sleep clothes all day that had anything to do with being a woman, but he had a feeling that asking might get him slapped, or given too much information.
While Steve started breakfast, Natasha settled herself at her desk, bringing her computer out of sleep mode. "Okay, so while Steve's making us food, what did you want to talk to Sharon about?"
"I need to get her a copy of Hydra's records in case they need to be released," Bucky said. "I'm turning myself in."
Natasha whipped her head around to stare at him. "What? Why?"
"Lots of reasons, but mostly because if I run forever, Hydra's controlling me again. I'm not giving them that power," Bucky said.
Like with Steve the night before, that reason seemed to sink in faster than anything else he could've said. Natasha sighed. "All right. But I can't help you with that. You're going to have to get out of Nebraska, I can't afford drawing any more attention to myself here than I possibly already have."
"I understand," Bucky said. "Just call her."
Natasha didn't give him verbal conversation, just started typing into her computer. Bucky walked over to stand behind her, watching the screen as the telecomm program popped up and dialed that same scrambled number that Natasha had called their first night in Lincoln.
While they waited for Sharon to answer, Natasha glanced into the kitchen. "Damn, should've gotten my coffee before doing this."
"Ask Steve to get you some after the food can be left alone," Bucky said.
"Thanks for volunteering me," Steve said.
Bucky looked over at him briefly, before going back to watching the screen. "Any time, buddy."
When Sharon's face appeared, she looked tired, like maybe they'd just woken her. She didn't look terribly unkempt, though, so either she was a fortunate person in that she could roll out of bed and look good, or she'd been up for awhile and just didn't want to be. "Good morning, Natasha, James," she said. "I take it there's news?"
Natasha motioned to Bucky. "He needed to talk to you."
When Sharon turned her attention over to Bucky, Bucky drew in a deep breath, committing himself to his idea. "I'm turning myself in."
Sharon groaned. "I can't let you do that, not until I have enough information to get you back out. Even if you don't care, Steve does, and the American government is not about to upset Captain America by arresting his best friend when nobody knows the truth behind these rumors."
"You need to know who I was working for." He said it as a statement, but it was as much a question.
"That would help, yes," Sharon said. "You said I already know, but I'm afraid I'm drawing blanks on that. Care to help me out?"