thecapitol | The Binding of Isaac

"Steve," he says, the name beating inside his head like a drum, or the pulse of his own heart. "They got Steve."

Bucky turns, his fists still clenched tight. The metal one is steady and strong as every but the right, the right hand is trembling with emotion, blood running over his fingers to drip to the ground. "I need to go back and get him."

It's a betrayal of Steve's wishes. It's something the Soldier would never have considered but Bucky Barnes needs to do because he can't leave Steve behind, Steve promised him... he promised him they'd be together till the end of the line. Bucky knew what that meant and he knew, intrinsically, that when the end of the line came it was meant to be both of them together. He's fucked up with that so many times, he can't again.

They can't kill him, they won't. it'd be an avoxing or maybe worse but Steve is popular, he can't be executed.

"I'm going back to get him."

It's not just a back alleyway in the Capitol, it's the streets of Brooklyn, it's a HYDRA factory in war-torn Europe with a pit of fire between them. That didn't stop them then, this can't stop him now.

"Not alone."

It's out before he can think about it, because honestly, he isn't doing a lot of thinking right now. He's told Steve and Bucky and Kurloz that he'd have their backs, always, and now two of them are captured and the other is hell set on going on what's pretty much a suicide mission to get one of them back.

There's no way that Sam is just going to let Bucky go.

"How? What's the plan, what are we doing?"

He's not just asking because he's hoping to appeal to Bucky's logical side, to get him to realize that there's no way to pull this off. Sam's asking because he hopes Bucky has a plan, he hopes Bucky has a way to get them in to get Steve and get out that isn't going to end up in all three of them dead or captured.

It's not fair to pin that hope on Bucky, because deep down Sam knows it's not possible, but god he's hoping anyway.

The Plan. Right, they should have a plan. "Kill anyone who get's in our way."

No, that's not a plan and if it is it's a pretty terrible one. It's a clear demonstration of how much Bucky isn't thinking straight anymore. He's not considering that there's a base full of Peacekeepers between them and Steve. That those Peacekeepers are no longer at ease but on alert and prepared for any intruders, even that they'll be doubling their patrols and already starting to scour the streets for any rebels they can find. Their disguises won't help them anymore.

Bucky shakes his head, all furious anger and fear bottled up inside him and needing an outlet. "We have to get him back."

Sam knows. He wasn't here the first time Steve got captured but he has to know there's no way the Capitol will be lenient on him this time. They have to get back in there and fetch Steve back with them.

It's a terrible plan, but it's pretty much what Sam'd been expecting. It's what Sam's kneejerk reaction had been, and he hasn't quite moved on from the desire to do exactly that.

But hearing Bucky say it out loud nudges him in that direction.

"You know better than me that that's not gonna cut it, charging in there and killing everyone we can isn't going to get him back."

Sam doesn't even bother trying to argue that all it's going to do is wind up with both of them killed. For one, he's pretty sure Bucky doesn't care. For another - Sam doesn't care. About Bucky, yeah, it's a deterrant knowing that if they charge in there all that's gonna happen is that he's going to lose Bucky, too.

But Sam doesn't give a damn if he gets himself killed getting Steve out of there, as long as it works.

"There's nothing else!" he snaps.

Bucky knows it, Sam knows it. There's no time for anything else. If they don't act know the Peacekeepers will drag Steve off to locations unknown, more heavily fortified and ready for an attack than the place they just raided. He remembers the jail they were put into last time, beaten and branded like animals before being shoved into a tiny space with a forcefield keeping them isolated from each other. Able to see and hear but not touch.

Being in that cell had been torture alone, his face and body in agony with healing wounds and this time it will be worse.

"We're wasting time."

“And then what, huh? We barrel in there, we try to kill anyone who tries to stop us, then what? Is-”

He cuts off. ’Is us getting killed or caught too better than this’, he’d been about to ask, but he can’t. Not when Sam knows what his own answer is, when he can’t stand hearing if Bucky’s is the same. Yes, yes being in there with Steve is better than being out here without him.

But not if it costs him Bucky, too. Sam might be willing to throw his own life away going after Steve, but he’s not willing to throw away Bucky’s, and he doesn’t care if that makes him a hypocrite. He lost Riley and Nat and he thought Albert, and now Steve and Kurloz and he can’t add Bucky to that list, he can’t, even if it means getting in his way. Even if it means arguing against something Sam’d give anything to be able to do.

He stops saying ‘we,’ switches to ‘you,’ because if he doesn’t, Sam’s not sure he could believe himself.

"You heard what Steve said. This is his choice, don't take it from him. You know he'd rather it be him in there than you, don't give yourself to them, all right, don't let them punish him twice over."

"If that's what it takes." he starts to say, trembling with anger.

It's... so many situations all over again. Things he can and can't remember, feelings of familiarity. Steve gets over his head and Bucky's there to back him up and pull him back out of it. That's how it's supposed to work, not this.

The knife twists in his chest as Sam reminds him of Steve's last words over the communicator, words that Bucky is certain hearken back to something else. Those words were meant for him, maybe more than anyone else and he's furious at Steve for it. His head hurts just thinking about it, a dull throbbing behind his eyes.

What good was he if couldn't do this?

"I can't let them hurt him, they'll kill him."

"They're not going to kill him, they're not going to kill either of them. That'd make them martyrs." More than likely, the Capitol is going to try to make this as little of a deal as possible, so no one knows exactly what happened, how many people were involved, or that they achieved what they set out to do.

"Going in there right now isn't going to get him back. I-"

-can't lose you, too, but his voice cracks and he cuts himself off again. It occurs to him that he's doing that more in this conversation than he's ever done, and it feels like he's floundering, but - well, he is floundering. It's hard to try to figure out what he's supposed to be saying when he can barely figure out what he's thinking.

But he can't say that when he's a little afraid of Bucky's reaction. That it won't matter a damn bit when it comes down to it, that what Sam thinks is nothing. Or maybe that it will matter, that it'll make Bucky reconsider and then he'll resent Sam for getting in his way.

"I'd take his place faster than even either of you could see, you gotta know that. If I could make it me and not him, I would."

Bucky stiffens, breathing harden than he has any right to without exerting himself at all. He hates the damned logic behind Sam's words, when everything in him is screaming for an outlet to act. He hates Steve for telling him not to come for him.

"They already caught us once. Two times?!" he shakes his head, then snarls in frustration and lashes out with his fist against the wall again.

It's after that he crumbles, shoulders slumping to shake with helplessness. "I'm supposed to protect him, I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed."

“Maybe. Maybe you being there wouldn’t have done anything but you getting a front row seat to what was happening.”

Sam knows about I should have been there and being there not making a single fucking difference. Steve isn’t Riley, Sam knows that, he does. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t acknowledge the similarities between them, in what Riley meant to Sam and what Steve’s come to mean to him, but Sam joining up with Steve was never about him trying to get back what he had with Riley, just like he knows Steve making friends with him was never about him trying to find a replacement for Bucky. Sam has never had any trouble confusing them, but that doesn’t make this any easier. Steve is just as important to him as Riley’d been, in a very different way.

Right now, Sam hates the logic behind his own words. He doesn’t want logic, he wants Steve. But he knows that this isn’t going to get him back.

"I knew when I joined Steve that I was signing on to win or die trying, but going in there right now isn't die trying, it's giving up. It's writing off you and him, and we can't do that." Sam swallows, reaching out to grip Bucky's shoulder and hoping he isn't about to get himself punched. "We're a team, and we'll stay a team. We'll fall back, regroup. We'll get Tony and Psiioniic on trying to find them, on getting us something to work with. We'll gear up and prepare, because it's gonna get ugly. Steve, he made a tough call, but the one's we're gonna have to make, they're gonna be even tougher."

Bucky stiffens up under the touch, tense in ways that suggest that he's teetering on the edge of lashing out against more than the wall. It would be so damn easy to do...

... and so damn unfair.

It isn't Sam's fault, Bucky thinks it as he stares at the dirty brick in front of him, not daring to look back just yet. His control balances on a thread and it's taking all he has not to do something he'll regret more heavily later on.

"If he doesn't come back..." I don't know what I'll do, I don't know how I'll cope. Steve was his guide, his anchor in not being that monster anymore. "Then I'll kill them all."

It's maybe stupid of him considering the first few times he met Bucky the guy was doing his level best to kill him, but Sam doesn't really believe that Bucky will hurt him. He thinks maybe he'll try, maybe Bucky's not done lashing out just yet and Sam's making himself a pretty convenient target, but he doesn't actually think it'll go farther than that.

Or maybe it's that he still isn't thinking all that clearly, despite the fact that he's trying to be logical.

Fear grips him tight at 'if he doesn't come back', and Sam slides over that thought, refusing to examine it too closely. It's not avoidance if he's planning on dealing with later, he tells himself, he just can't do it right now. Especially with what Bucky says next, and they've already had this talk, but back then it hadn't been about Steve.

"Only if you're planning on me going with you."

Edited 2015-06-06 23:30 (UTC)

Bucky doesn't move, he doesn't even feel like he's breathing right now as a matter of fact. He just keeps focusing on the wall, feeling the tremble running through his body. Sam can surely feel it too.

Words are like buzzing in his ears. "You shouldn't." Bucky says flatly. "It's not... you shouldn't."

It's not a job for someone like Sam to do, it's a job for someone like Bucky. A weapon, a killer, a knife in the dark. Everything they'd made him to be boils beneath the surface; the assassin who didn't hesitate. What Bucky's thinking about is the kind of work that person was made for.

The Asset didn't feel a damned thing, Bucky wishes he could be like that too right now.

He doesn't tense, exactly, but he does go still. He can feel that trembling, and it's really making him want to pull Bucky into a hug or something - but those words only add to the frustration Sam can feel humming somewhere underneath his surface, and part of him just wants to shake Bucky until he listens.

Sam doesn't exactly like being told what he shouldn't do like that, especially not when it's 'if one of your best friends ends up dead and one of the only ones you got left goes off on a killing spree that's probably going to end up with him dead, too, you shouldn't do anything about it.'

There's a couple of things Bucky could mean by that - that it's Bucky's place, maybe, not Sam's, or that Bucky could do it while Sam would only hold him back - or the one he's leaning towards, that it's something Bucky should do because of what he is, but none of them are anything Sam likes.

"Yeah? And why's that?"

Bucky doesn't know if he could stand being hugged right now, or if that would be the last straw to make him lash out and hurt Sam. Then he'd feel even worse and Sam would be angry with him. All his options right now feel terrible, like there's a weight crushing on his chest, stifling his ability to breathe.

If he's not careful he's going to have a damn panic attack in the middle of this alleyway so he swallows hard, forces himself to breathe and count the seconds between each inhale and exhale.

"It's what I'm made for." Every piece of him sharpened into a blade so no one else had to get their hands dirty. He was the one with the red soaked into every pore of his skin, no one else should have to do that, especially not Sam.

All right, looks like they're going with option number three. Sam breathes for a moment, unconsciously mirroring Bucky a little, keeping himself stable and swallowing down his kneejerk response until he can come up with something more coherent.

"No, it isn't," Sam replies, voice low but steady. "What they tried to make you into, that wouldn't give a damn about Steve getting taken out, and sure as hell wouldn't be looking for revenge on the ones that did it. That's all Bucky Barnes, man, because sometimes? Fucking with people is way more dangerous than fucking with weapons." Bucky may have been deadly as shit as the Winter Soldier, but Sam bets the Soldier has nothing on Bucky out for revenge. "But the thing you gotta understand is you're not the only one who loves Steve enough to be tempted as hell to do something like that without him."

'Love' isn't the right word there, Sam knows that, but he doesn't have the clarity of mind right now to try to explain it differently. It's the best he's got. Especially when his voice cracks partway through what he follows that up with as he fights to stay calm, to not slide into either too damn emotional or too damn pissed. "And Steve isn't the only one who needs you."

His fingers twitched, metal and flesh, both connected to the same bunch of nerves giving out commands. With gloves on no one could tell the difference with how they'd perfected the response time of the prosthetic.

Sam's speaking truths that Bucky can't ignore. He wants to put this urge to go and tear the bastards apart on the Asset and everything they made him into; it'd be so much easier than being Bucky Barnes right now. The Asset knew pain and fear and anger at its most base human level, lashing out like an animal when cornered but Sam is right, the part of him that wants revenge is one hundred percent real person.

Maybe he's just trying to cover it up with that Winter Soldier persona that no longer fits him anymore. It used to be so easy to slip back and now when he tries, when he tries, it's like an ill-fitting skin, outgrown without electric fire to cut him down to size.

Finally Bucky turns his head from the wall and looks at Sam. He looks haunted, afraid and cut by the last words. He can't seem to find any words of his own.

Honestly, Sam’s not sure he’s equipped to handle this right now. His mind’s ripped up enough trying to balance grief and guilt with worry and fear, a much bigger mess than when it’s around death, because Steve and Kurloz are still out there and who knows what could be happening to them.

Throwing Bucky into all of that, adding the way it makes Sam’s chest ache with a quieter form of grief when he watches what his friend must be going through, it’s maybe a little too much. But he’s not going anywhere, not even when that haunted look cuts right through him.

“I need you,” he clarifies, very quietly, just in case Bucky hadn’t assumed that from his vaguer statement. “Stay here, Bucky, you gotta stay-” He cuts off just before saying something stupid like with me and finishes with, “Strong. I know it ain’t easy, but you and me, we’re strong enough to handle this. We have to be.”

They’d already talked about supporting each other when shit goes bad, and this is pretty much as bad as it could get. It’s not what Sam expected, back when he brought it up, and it’s not what Sam wants - he wants Steve to be safe - but it’s what they’ve got.

He wants -- he needs... Bucky doesn't know, he doesn't -- doesn't know. Sam needs him, tells him to stay. Steve told him to stay. They both want him to stay put when everything in him is screaming to save his friend.

Bucky feels worn, beaten. In the end he'll obey, like he's always obeyed. He's always followed Steve's lead, then the Asset always obeyed. No, it's not just -- Sam needs him. He needs him.

That's what does it, finally.

There's still no words. Bucky feels like his throat is locked up tight, the sound inside him ready to shatter if he dares let it out, so he doesn't. He keeps it inside, his shoulders sinking as the fight runs out of him and his head bows in a nod, acknowledging surrender to reason.

When Bucky nods, the fight drains out of Sam, too. Everything in him’s been focused on getting Bucky not to go, and now that he’s agreed to stay - Sam’s not sure what to do.

He looks away briefly, because he can feel tears pricking at his eyes. It’s stupid, that this is what gets to him, that after everything, it’s Bucky staying here that pushes him over the edge. If it was someone else, maybe even at another time, Sam’d say that it was normal to have a reaction like that when dealing with shit, that one thing going even sort of okay can be what sets you off, but right now, Sam doesn’t want to unpack any of this. He angrily pushes the heel of his palm into his eye until he can feel the sting go away.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna fall apart on you.” He looks back up, thinks about adding some kind of smile to go along with that, but gives up before he tries. “I, uh. Thanks.”

Bucky's eyes widen slightly.

After all that he hadn't expected Sam to -- but of course Sam is just as broken up inside as Bucky is. The whole reason Bucky doesn't trust his voice right now is because he doesn't know if a scream or a sob will come out if he tries to speak. Maybe even something worse.

He steps forward, slowly, his hand (right) reaching for Sam's wrist. The gesture has to be enough, his fingers wound loose around his friends arm. For comfort, for guidance and he's not thinking clear enough to know for which side is which. Maybe both, maybe all.

There's a nod to go along with it, though no returned smile.

The gesture's more than enough, and Sam feels some of the tightness in his chest loosen when Bucky takes his wrist. It takes a moment for surprise to set in, but it's only a brief flicker. Maybe later he'll look back and realize that this is the first time Bucky's initiated contact like that, that even with - even with everything, Bucky actually reached out, but...

But right now he'll just take it and be real damn grateful for it. He shifts his hand a little, just enough that he can circle his own fingers loosely around Bucky's arm, mirroring the gesture.

"Thanks," he says again, quieter but a lot more steady.

Bucky nods.

The alleyway is quiet, mostly vacated now aside from them. It's the plan that they should be filtering back to the Tribute Tower now, staggering their return so as not to arouse suspicion but lingering too long holds its own risks.

There's really nothing else to do now but return back to the belly of the best.

He tugs, lightly, starting to walk in that direction and hoping Sam will come with him. He doesn't want to make the journey alone.

Sam’s at Bucky’s side as soon as he feels that tug, keeping pace with him. Bucky doesn’t really ask for a lot, as far as Sam’s concerned, and if Bucky wants Sam with him right now, then that’s where Sam will be.

That, and staying with Bucky is where he needs to be, for himself, too. Sam doesn’t want to face this alone, either.

So he sets his shoulders, takes a few deep breaths as they head back. Nothing’s better, none of it, but - he feels a little more like maybe he can handle this.

The Binding of Isaac

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