[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: Bucky gives everyone so many headaches. Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 14 Author:yuuo Word Count: 3701 Summary:The silence was deafening.
The silence was deafening. The only sound was the whir of the computer fans and the sound of something starting to cook in the skillet. Nobody moved or spoke; Bucky could just barely see Steve watching from the kitchen, hardly paying attention to that food that was starting to sizzle, and Natasha was looking up at Sharon's image on the screen.
Sharon's expression didn't even change for about a second and a half, then she broke that brief stillness. "I'm sorry, I think my connection might not be working right. Could you repeat that?" She looked like she desperately wanted to believe what she was saying and not what she'd heard.
"There's nothing wrong with your connection," Bucky said. "I said I was working for Hydra."
For another two seconds, Sharon's expression remained frozen, like a snapshot, before animating from shock into disbelief. "Okay, you're going to have to walk me through this. Why were you working for Hydra? Hydra has been your enemy from the start, even before Captain Rogers declared personal war on them."
"They were trying to replicate the super serum when my unit was captured," Bucky said. "I got the unlucky draw as their test subject. After I fell off the train, they decided to finish the job." He was keeping his voice as flat and unaffected as possible, but he felt bile in his stomach. He so rarely spoke of it, even to Steve. He didn't need to; Steve knew as much as Bucky did, and describing the experience was difficult, even in the best of mindsets. Natasha knew, and Tony knew. Pepper had an idea, and so did Bruce. Bucky wasn't sure how much Sam knew for certain, but he didn't interact with Sam, so that didn't matter much.
But Sharon was a stranger. He knew of her, but had never personally met her before talking to her on the telecomm the night before. And he was telling her about it. A stranger. Better get used to that, he told himself. The whole damn world might know it soon.
That thought didn't sit well with him.
Sharon wasn't dumb, not by a long shot. Steve wouldn't fall for a woman that had no brains. "And they did more than just experiment," she added, extrapolating from what he'd said. "They affected your mind."
"My last target was Captain America," he said. "I nearly finished that job."
"I was there when Steve recognized him," Natasha spoke up. "Steve said his name and his reply was 'who the hell's Bucky?' Hydra wiped everything."
Sharon was quiet a moment. "Do you have any proof of this?"
"I have the records of the Winter Soldier Project," Bucky said. "It doesn't cover what was done in 1943, but it covers from 1945 onward. When they found me, they realized that their chemicals had some effect, enough that I'd survived, and they started the Winter Soldier Project. I don't know where they got that name."
"If I had to guess, it was a reference to the Cold War, given where they put you working, from the looks of the information we're getting," Sharon said. "That term was first used in '45. They may have been specifically targeting you at that. An extended war between two world superpowers would- well, history saw the effect."
"It gave Hydra what they wanted," Natasha said. "When Steve and I talked to Zola, he said that they'd purposely been pushing the world into wars, using the Winter Soldier to shove things around when necessary, to make sure that the world would give up freedom to Hydra for the sake of safety. Thus, the Project Insight helicarriers."
Sharon looked confused again, something that Bucky had a feeling he'd be seeing on her face a lot this conversation. They were throwing a lot of things out of left field at her. "I thought Doctor Zola died years ago."
"He was living in a computer," Natasha said. "It was complicated."
"That's one way to put it," Sharon said, rubbing her face. "Please tell me Hydra doesn't have any more computer people?" She looked at Bucky.
"No idea," Bucky said. "I only knew of Zola vaguely. He was in charge of the experiments, but I didn't remember any of that at the time he was destroyed. I just knew he existed and was important to Hydra and that's all I needed to know."
"Is there anything useful they told you?" Sharon asked. She sounded like she knew the answer to that. "Like why any of these targets were selected? Some of them don't seem to have had the same profound effect as others, like the Starks."
More bile. Bucky swallowed it back. "You don't tell your gun your plans for world domination," he said. "You don't even tell it why you're pointing it at who you're pointing it at. It just fires where you tell it to."
"That information isn't in those records?"
Bucky shook his head. "No. They're only records of the experiments themselves, not the missions. I don't know where that information would be. We found nothing at the base in Kiev."
Sharon clearly didn't like that option, but she let it drop. "How can I get a copy of these records from you? We can meet up somewhere, we can handle taking you into custody, get this information where it needs to be to keep you from becoming Public Enemy Number One."
Bucky looked at Natasha. "Your computer can create a digital copy from our hard copy, right?"
Natasha gave him an incredulous look. "You have to ask? This computer will do everything but dance, if you ask it to." Then she pointed up at Sharon. "She makes a good point, you know. If you turn yourself over to them, you'll technically be in custody of the US government, they can sort out the AWOL thing and get those records where they need to be. But I have a feeling you intended on just riding a bus to the nearest government building and hoping for the best, weren't you?"
"Not the nearest, no," Bucky said. "I wasn't going to jeopardize your mission here. I figured I'd find an Army base somewhere." He looked at Sharon. "As much as I appreciate the offer, I can't do it that way. Hydra's the one releasing this information. They're trying to control where I can and can't go. It's basically blackmail." Sharon started to try to reply, but Bucky walked all over that one by not letting her get those words in. "The CIA is an intelligence agency, if they step in without us at least trying to go to another source, nobody's going to buy that our accusations against Hyrda are legit. If I do it this way, Hydra loses their power over both me and Steve."
If she could pull out the Steve card, so could Bucky. He felt a bit guilty using Steve as leverage, though.
"But we're a back up plan," Sharon said, and he could hear the question in it, but it sounded mostly like an order that she wasn't going to hear 'no' to.
"I wouldn't take the chance with Steve's life to not have one," Bucky said. "That's going to have to be good enough for you."
Sharon looked frustrated. "If I had a choice, it wouldn't be, but Steve is probably on your side, and I know how he is when he gets an idea in his head."
"Anyone who knows me does," Steve interrupted. He'd walked over, two plates with eggs, toast and sausage in hand. So much for those waffles. He must not've been able to find a waffle iron. He set one plate down in front of Natasha, and handed Bucky the other. "Hi, Sharon."
The smile Sharon gave Steve was half-hearted, genuine, but too tired and frazzled to be bright and shiny. "Hello, Steve. Tell your friend he's giving me a headache."
Steve made a derisive noise. "He gives everyone headaches. You learn to live with it."
Bucky looked at him. "You have absolutely no room to talk."
"I can agree to that, too," Sharon said. "I've been protecting you two for the last year and a half."
"How do you manage that without us catching on?" Steve demanded.
She smiled. "I take after my aunt."
Bucky didn't know who Sharon's aunt was, but Steve looked flustered, so he guessed that Steve did. He'd ask later.
"Did you have any ideas where you were going to go?" Sharon asked.
"Dunno. An Army base, likely. I'm still one of theirs, officially." Bucky set his plate and fork down on Natasha's desk, damned if he cared what she thought of that. "Hang on, let me get that file."
"How far away from the east coast are you?" Sharon asked, while Bucky walked over to the couch bed and dug into his bag for the file.
"Not as far as we could be, but far enough," Steve said. "We can get out there in a couple days, though. Why?"
Bucky walked back over, dropping the file next to Natasha. "You've picked out a base already."
"Fort Meade," she said. "It's a big base, and the NSA is housed there."
Steve and Natasha exchanged a look, and Bucky raised an eyebrow, wondering what that was about.
Natasha smiled. "Deja vu," she said.
Steve shook his head. "That'll work. I know my way around there."
"I think I'm better off not asking," Sharon said. She studied them, or specifically, Natasha, who had started eating. "I'll let you three get to your breakfast," she said. "Send me that file as soon as you're done. I think I'll take a cue from you and get something to eat while I wait."
Natasha waved her fork at Sharon in a 'good bye', then disconnected the call. She looked up at Bucky, still chewing, and pointed at the file on her desk, then at her food.
"I'd tell you to chew and swallow first," he said. "But I think I actually understood that. I didn't expect you to let your food get cold to scan that."
"Speaking of food getting cold," Steve said. "I should probably get mine."
Bucky grabbed his plate and settled on the edge of the bed. "Whose brilliant idea was it to try to talk on the phone and eat at the same time?"
For a second, nobody answered, all three of them looking between each other. Nobody seemed to want to point fingers or accept blame.
Natasha was the first to speak up. "I think we all had a hand in that dumb decision."
Bucky considered that. "Acceptable answer."
In the name of not letting their food get any colder than it already was- the eggs were room temp, ew -they hurried through their breakfast, not bothering with that pesky thing called 'interaction'. When they were done, Natasha held out her plate for Steve to take. "You're the closest, take that to the kitchen for me so I can scan this file?" She gave him a sweet smile that didn't belong on her face. "Please?"
Steve took the plate without a word, stacking it on his own empty plate. Then, with a shit eating grin that Bucky instantly mistrusted, he walked over to Bucky and handed them both to him. "I made breakfast," he said.
Bucky took the plates, jaw dropped and staring at Steve in betrayal. That asshole had just managed to dump kitchen duty on him. "I did dishes yesterday morning."
"If you want this file scanned, I'm not doing it," Natasha said, not looking over from her work. She frowned. "I wonder if they need this translated." She looked at Steve. "Does Sharon know this language?"
"No idea," Steve said.
Bucky gave him a dirty look behind his back, but took the plates into the kitchen to wash them. Jerkface assholes, both of them. "I'm sure someone on the team would be able to translate," he said, deciding fuck it, he was using the dishwasher, even if there were precious few dishes to put in there. He wasn't submerging his metal hand into water more than he actually had to. "We don't know how big their team is, for one, for another, they have the resources of the CIA. If there's not some way of translating that for them, then the CIA is a failure and we need to find another back up plan."
Natasha raised an eyebrow, not looking away from her work, so she might've raised both, Bucky couldn't tell from his angle. But he recognized that smile again. "You make a good point. I think we'll be okay with Sharon's team. She's got personal reason to keep you two safe. That tends to motivate people."
"It can," he said, digging around in the cupboard under the sink. "Where the hell do you keep your dishwasher soap?" he demanded. Before she could answer, he finally spotted the baggie of tablets. "Never mind." He yanked it out, staring at it in annoyance. It was a plastic resealable bag, with almost nothing for traction on the inside of the bag above the seal to grab onto. Which meant his metal fingers were going to slide right off it.
Sometimes, his arm was a miracle worker and had saved his life more than he cared to count. Other times, it was a handicap that was really fucking annoying.
He grabbed a towel and wrapped the edges around his metal fingers, then grabbed the bag and yanked it open. He'd used that trick before, before Steve realized why and started getting the little tubs of tablets, instead. Bucky hadn't asked him to, but then Steve had never asked Bucky to do any of the little things he'd done to make one of Steve's physical ailments easier to deal with.
Steve looked over at him as he rejoined his current partners in crime by the computer. "So. Fort Meade," Steve said. "That's not far from DC, up around Baltimore. It's a pretty big place, lots of civilians live there."
"Why?" Bucky looked at him.
"Civilian employees," Steve clarified." He looked up at the inactive computer screen. "We can't take a plane, your arm would stop us at security alone. Natasha can't help us anymore, she's got to stay here." He frowned. "That leaves us train or bus. And I don't think we'd be able to take our weapons with us on either, not with luggage limitations."
Bucky glanced towards the corner by the couch where their weapons and uniforms had remained hidden, thinking. "I don't think I want those in their hands anyway," he said. Then he looked down at Natasha. "Is there anyway you could arrange for someone from Carter's team to get them?"
Natasha tilted her head back, looking up at him. "I occasionally make trips to Omaha, I can arrange for it to be picked up there. That's close, but it won't look as strange for a government operative to go to Omaha. Lincoln's a bit odd, though." She went back to work. "The Amtrak station is walking distance from here, next to the giant arena you might've missed. I can look up routes in a minute. Cheaper alternative would be Greyhound. I'd have to drive you to the depot, it's on the north side of town."
"We're not needing to be stingy, just low profile," Steve said.
Natasha set a few pages to scan, then pulled up a browser. "Ending in Baltimore or DC?" she asked, pulling up Amtrak's site.
"Let's go with Baltimore," Steve said. "Rather than right in the middle of DC. Give us a chance to get to Meade before someone else decides to cuff us. Pretty sure they're both about the same distance away from the base anyway."
"Baltimore it is," she said, putting that into the ticket search. She scrolled. "Well, if you want to leave just before three-thirty in the morning, you can leave tomorrow and be in Baltimore by three in the afternoon. If you want low profile..." She clicked on the most expensive ticket. "They have single rooms, with all the amenities. Two beds, two nice seats, table, food, picture window. You'd have to share the bathroom and shower with other people on the car, but other than that, if you're wanting to keep as unnoticed as possible, staying in a private room might be best." She looked up at Steve. "Rather than mingling with the unwashed masses."
Steve chuckled. "I was born an unwashed mass, I don't mind them so much. But you're right, a seat where nobody interacts with us except to bring us food would be best." He studied the screen. "An eleven and a half hour trip. Not bad. Bus would probably take us longer, with lots of stops and passenger changes. Too risky." He looked at Bucky.
Bucky shrugged. "You're the captain, Captain," he said. "I'm just a sergeant."
"I hate it when you do that," Steve said.
"Why do you think I do it?" Bucky asked. "Okay, so we take Amtrak. We don't need a card to get that ticket, do we? We can't use ours or yours, they'll track us back here and compromise you."
Natasha didn't answer right away, looking through the site's FAQs. "If you're lucky, you can get that private room with cash at the ticket counter, it looks like. That answer your question?"
"Well enough," Bucky said. "You want us gone that quickly? We made you buy a lot of food that you probably can't eat by yourself."
Natasha glanced towards the kitchen. "A few-" Her telecomm program dinged, coming to the forefront of the computer. She looked up at it. "Okay, get out of here," she said, waving them away quickly. "Out of sight."
Bucky didn't ask questions, grabbed Steve's arm and pulled him with him towards the bed to sit down. Steve sat down next to Bucky, leaning over a bit to try to see what was going on on the screen.
Natasha started speaking a language that Bucky didn't know, but thought might've been Arabic. It was hard to tell without knowing the language in question. He raised an eyebrow and looked at Steve, wondering if Steve understood, or at least could see what was on the screen.
Steve looked back at him and shook his head with a shrug. Well, damnit, they were both in the dark. But it was likely that it was a correspondence between Natasha and Clint, especially if Bucky was right and that was Arabic she and whoever was on that screen were speaking.
Steve leaned over to him and whispered in his ear, "it's Clint. I recognize his voice."
Bucky nodded once, wishing he could follow along with what was being said, but since he couldn't, he settled back on the bed, legs crossed underneath him, and reached for his book. He had no idea how long this was going to go on, might as well amuse his brain while he waited, instead of letting it struggle to try to translate a language he didn't know.
The book did little to distract him. He kept rereading a sentence because he'd look up to try to listen again every few seconds and then lose his place. Steve didn't even try to distract himself, still trying to watch the screen. Bucky finally gave up, nudging Steve's arm. 'Do you understand them?' he asked silently.
Steve shook his head.
Damnit.
Bucky studied Natasha's reactions, which were more subdued than they'd been the last day or so. He didn't realize how much having friends around animated her until he saw her in contrast at work. She didn't look pleased, though. But, she was in the middle of gathering intel on the Islamic State, who thought beheading journalists was for fun and profit, so it probably wasn't a terribly pleasant conversation she was having.
Bucky resisted the urge to tap his metal finger on the cover his now-abandoned book, knowing it'd make a very annoying and distracting noise that would probably just piss Natasha off at him, and he didn't need that. He was still relying on her to finish sending that file, and then get their gear back to them. He had no desire to make her mad while she was in the middle of her real job.
It was about ten minutes, ten minutes where Natasha and Clint spoke in that language that Bucky really wished he understood, Natasha looking progressively more agitated and typing away furiously as they talked. Finally, she stopped and gave Clint an awful look, then snapped something at him in that language. He replied calmly, then the line disconnected. Natasha's hands balled into fists, resting on the top of her desk as she took some deep, even breaths.
She looked over at them. "I sincerely hope neither of you speak Arabic."
Steve shook his head. "I don't. And as far as I know, B- James doesn't."
"I don't," Bucky said. "But I can tell that conversation didn't go the way you wanted it to."
Natasha studied them both. "The situation's gotten bad over there," she said. "I want him to get out of there, he won't. We can't outstubborn each other. That's all." She turned back to the computer, returning to scanning the file. "Either way, it means you two are leaving on the morning train. I'm going to make sure your equipment gets handled, and then I'm going to keep doing my job. But I can't have you underfoot anymore."
Steve didn't look terribly bothered by her sudden change in demeanor, and Bucky understood it, but he still felt a bit put off by it. She could be really cold when she wanted to be.
Bucky had a feeling she was about to change her job and they would be at risk. He was starting to read her just well enough to know that regardless of her feelings one way or another about him, she was friends with Steve, and wouldn't treat him like that without good reason.