#yes i was going on an essay mode about the blond man again because there's so many thoughts in my brain at all time and i was feeling low | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batwake · 5 years

Text

Come In From The Cold - chapter three + epilogue

chapter one - chapter two

pairing: clint barton/bucky barnes

ao3 link

It rains.

It rains and it rains and it rains.

The first person they try to send in gets his neck broken. The second and third have their own guns turned against them. The fourth calls out a woman’s name as his head connects with the doorframe. They don’t send any more for a while after that.

There are no windows, but the rain can be heard loud and clear. Which means it’s close. To what, it’s unknown. The surface, if the cell is underground. Some sort of window, if it isn’t. Close to going crazy, close to escape, to a man dressed in purple, to a house.

The fifth person they send is not taken down so easily.

Dodge. Dodge. Punch, miss. Dive, go for the legs. Go for my legs, someone had said. Jump back up, punch when he isn’t expecting—

The man goes down, does not get back up.

The Winter Soldier sits on the floor, and does not feel like he has won.

When Clint was a kid, he and Barney used to play a game.

It was like hide and seek. When dad gets home from the bar, you hide. When you wake up at three am and hear him yelling at mom, you seek. Clint isn’t allowed to step between Barney and dad, but can between dad and mom. Don’t talk to dad unless he talks to you first.

The rules of the game went out the window once dad hit Clint’s head too hard and they couldn’t afford hearing aids. Barney stood up for Clint when he hadn’t before, talking to dad out of turn when Clint couldn’t hear him. Shoving him roughly and telling him make everything something to hit with. And hit them until they stop.

Barney hadn’t been a good brother.

But he wasn’t a bad one, either.

So Clint picks up the phone and calls.

It rains well into the night, long after Nick Fury has vacated the premises with the barest promise to let Clint know if they learn anything else.

Kate arrives sometime after three am, finding Clint sitting on the floor of his living room, all of the furniture pushed up against the far wall and the carpet rolled up. Clint isn’t dancing, though. Piles of paper sit on the floor around him, all from an overflowing file that Fury had left. It mostly incomprehensible, and what Clint can actually make out doesn’t make sense. There’s a form that appears to be from the army, the name James Buchanan Barnes at the top, and a photo showing a younger and clean cut Bucky dressed in fancy army greens. Another photo is attached to what looks like an essay written in Russian, and has Bucky in a more familiar form, with his long hair and unshaved face. He looks dead, almost, skin tinted blue as he sits in what can only be some sort of freezer. There are other photos, of brain scans and dog tags and chairs that look like the kind of thing an evil dentist would have. Clint can’t make sense of it all. Some pages are written in English and appear to be American, while others must be Russian.

He hadn’t been able to explain much over the phone, but she looks understanding as she toes over the papers to kneel next to Clint, who is shaking. Kate wraps her arms around him delicately, not paying any attention to her soaking wet rain coat or the papers around them. Clint presses his face into her neck and lets himself cry, her soothing hands pressed to the back of his head. For a fleeting moment, he is reminded of his mother.

“It’ll all be okay,” Kate assures him, snapping Clint out of the fog he had been in. Kate is Kate, and never anyone else. She presses their foreheads together, her wet hair falling into Clint’s face. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We’re calling in the reinforcements,” someone says. Clint’s head snaps up, looking over Kate’s shoulder to see a tall, blonde man standing awkwardly in the doorway. He looks sheepishly between Clint and Kate, like he feels bad for ruining their moment. “Uh, sorry.”

It dawns on Clint exactly who this is. “Katie, were you ever going to tell me that you know Captain America?”

Kate’s hand, which has moved to Clint’s shoulder, tightens its grip. “I ran into him in the stairwell. So somehow he knows where you live.”

Captain America shuffles. He is not at all like the warrior Clint has been picturing. He seems awkward, and carries himself like he isn’t totally sure what to do with his body. Steve is what Bucky had called him. His best friend.

“Bucky told you,” Clint realizes after a beat of silence while Steve searches for his words.

“For emergencies!” Steve hurries out. “I think this is as emergency as it gets.”

Clint presses both of his hands to the wood floor, trying to steady himself. Kate lowers herself so she is sitting beside him, shrugging off her coat and tossing it to the couch a few feet away. She remains close to Clint, their knees and shoulders bumping. Her worried eyes connect with Clint’s as she cuts off Steve’s continued awkward and panicked rambling. “The Captain said that he can help.”

Somewhere between the stairs and Clint’s apartment Kate and Steve had realized who the other was and were planning something. “Reinforcements,” Clint echoes from earlier.

Steve presses forward until he stands at the edge of the circle of papers that Clint has made, glancing over them. He doesn’t look surprised at what he sees. It makes Clint wonder how much of this Steve understands. “We, some of the other fighters and I, can help.”

“I don’t understand.”

Steve crouches down and picks up a few of the papers, looking over them. “Has Bucky told you anything? About his past.”

Clint shakes his head.

“I don’t believe the government, or whoever has Bucky, is planning on killing him anytime soon.”

“But Fury said—”

“Fury is holding his cards close to his chest,” Steve says, passing a paper over to Kate, who holds it in front of both of them. The paper has clearly been kept over years, maybe decades, the edges folding in and the page turning brown instead of white. That’s not what surprises Clint, as most of the papers around them are older than Kate. The page contains a list of some sort, a straight line of black going down the page next to a seperate list of years. The only thing besides the years that isn’t blacked out is one name at the bottom. James Buchanan Barnes sits next to the years 1963-2010. “You’ve heard of the Winter Soldier.”

“That’s Bucky,” Kate says.

Clint looks up. “There were—”

“Others,” Steve finishes, nodding. “Before Bucky. But he was the best.”

“The best at what?” asks Kate, practically reading Clint’s mind.

“The Winter Soldier was an assassin for a nazi organization called Hydra,” Steve explains delicately, sorting through all of the papers closest to him. He appears to know what they all mean. “Hydra got its start in the second World War, and like an infection, it continued to grow even after. They lurked in the shadows and started to gain a cult-like following. Bucky joined the army in ‘61, and well, died during a mission in ‘62. But he hadn't, not in the way it counts. He had been taken into captivity by Hydra and became a brainwashed killing machine who didn’t even know his own name.”

“How is that possible—” Kate starts.

“Bucky hadn’t been the first Winter Soldier, but he was the last. Up until then no other Winter Soldier had acted positively to the serum, or finished the training, or died not too long after they started active duty. But Bucky lasted. For forty seven years.”

“Wait,” Clint chokes out, but Steve continues.

“When they found my body in 2008, I joined SHIELD as Captain America and became an agent. I helped take down Hydra, saved Bucky, and then SHIELD shut down, never to be heard from again.”

They must be wearing twin faces of shock. Kate speaks first while Clint tries not to hyperventilate. “You’re the real Captain America? The one from those war posters in the 60s?”

“Yes.”

Kate presses a hand to her forehead. “Jesus Christ.”

This explains everything that was odd about Bucky, Clint thinks. The arm, the languages. His off days where it’s like he accidentally entered factory reset mode. For nearly fifty years, Bucky had been nothing more than a machine, an asset. Now, he was out of his time, his brain working like a fork in a blender, and was in an underground fighting ring because he had no other options. I don’t even technically exist, he had said. And then, you don’t know what I’ve done.

And now he’s gone.

Clint, suddenly steady and sober, stares at Steve. “You said you don’t think they want to kill him. What does any of this have to do with that?”

Steve manages to hold his gaze. “Hydra wouldn’t kill their greatest weapon.”

Beside Clint, Kate startles, leaning forward. “You’re not saying—”

“I believe Hydra has infiltrated the government, and is very likely the root of the accords.”

Steve leaves at 5am and promises to return in a few hours. He doesn’t explain where he is going.

Clint has about as much faith in him as he does with Nick Fury at this point, but lets him leave all the same. What more could he lose?

He looks warily at Kate over his coffee. She looks more put together than he does, and that’s saying something. Her hair sits high on her head in a sloppy bun, likely still wet from the rain, and makeup is smeared down her face. It looks like she’s wearing pajamas, with sweatpants tucked into her rain boots and a t-shirt she probably stole from Clint.

“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” Clint whispers after a long stretch of silence.

Kate frowns at him. “Don’t be sorry, dumbass.”

“I just—“

“You didn’t just anything, okay?” Kate reaches across the table and grabs his hand. “I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine, right Hawkeye?”

Clint sniffs, looking down at their hands. His chest tightens and constricts. “I don’t know what we’re getting into, here.” Steve talked of reinforcements and Hydra with some sort of optimism, like the fight isn’t over yet.

Like there’s still hope.

“It’s not like we did back then, either,” says Kate. “I didn’t expect to become your sidekick when you broke into my house.”

“You’re not my sidekick, Katie.”

She looks away, her gaze far off. “You got that right.”

More silence falls. Clint tries to keep his shit together, forcing himself to drink more coffee. Kate leaves the kitchen to take Lucky outside as the clock on the microwave approaches 6am.

She returns, hair once again wet and drooping sadly to one side of her head. Lucky shakes the water off right next to Clint, then wanders back into the living room to go back to sleep on the couch that is still pressed up against the wall. Clint is reading Barney’s letter again.

“I wouldn’t mind, you know.”

Clint looks up as she sits down, shedding her coat once more. Kate motions to the letter. “You could leave. I wouldn’t mind.”

He stares at her. “I would mind.” Clint couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t see Katie every day. He needs her to tell him when he’s being stupid, or take care of him when he’s sick. No one makes mac n’ cheese quite like she does, or rolls their eyes so hard it must give them a headache. No one to hold his hand or hug him in exactly the right way or share his bed after long nights. The only other person who could ever come close won’t be coming home anytime soon.

“You deserve to be somewhere with Bucky where you can both exist. You have the opportunity, don’t you want to go before it’s too late?”

“It’s already too late.”

“You heard what Steve said!”

Clint rubs his face, releasing a breath that sends a shake through his body. The truth is that he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. What if they do something, something crazy and stupid and definitely illegal and Clint spends the rest of his sad life in a prison, or worse. All for a ghost.

But doesn’t Bucky deserve that? The fighting chance? The what if?

Clint doesn’t even know how long it’s been since Bucky was taken into custody. Had Fury waited? Or was Clint the first to get the news? There were too many variables, none of it made sense—

“What if I don’t deserve it?” asks Clint after a while. Kate’s face softens as she lifts herself from the chair and rounds the table, wrapping her arms around Clint’s shoulders.

“You, Clint Barton,” she whispers to his hair, “deserve a happy ending most of all.”

By 11am, Steve still has not returned. Clint paces worriedly around the apartment, takes two showers, digs through the duffel bag holding all of their supplies, takes out his hearing aids, and sits stock still in the middle of all of Bucky’s papers. Knowing what he now knows about the Winter Soldier, some things click into place. There’s a pack of papers connected by a ring at the corner that’s just full of names and dates, a few censored here and there. Victims, Clint realizes, enemies of Hydra that the Winter Soldier targeted. There are thousands of names.

Clint’s stomach stirs uncomfortably. He sets the packet down and moves to stand, feeling ready for this third shower, when Kate, sitting on the couch, looks over at the front door. Clint follows her gaze, but doesn’t see anything. He looks back over at her as she signs wait, her palms up towards her and fingers wiggling. She is up and moving to the door before Clint can respond.

As she opens the door Clint lets himself slide back onto the floor, his feet tucked underneath him. Kate is stepping back and letting Steve in quickly, followed by two women. Kate is talking hurriedly to them, her mouth moving too quickly to read and her eyes looking between their new arrivals. Clint looks back down at the papers, too tired to get up and sort things out.

A pillow hits the side of his head. When he looks up, Kate is looking at him expectantly, Steve looks awkward, and the women are hard to read. Tall dark and beautiful has her arms folded and a blank expression on her face. The second, with defined muscles and big curly hair, looks like she’s judging Clint. Kate, looking small between the two women, runs her pointer finger across her forehead then places her right hand over her left and wiggles her fingers. After a pause and a glance to the second woman, she slots her fingers together and keeps her thumbs pointed up, moving her hands around in a circle.

Ah. So Steve really had called in the reinforcements, whatever that means. Clint was having a hard time keeping up.

The Black Widow says something, and Miss America begins to respond, but Kate cuts her off and starts to rattle on about whatever it is.

Clint lets out a long exhale, stands, carefully steps over all of the papers, pushes past Steve, heading into the bathroom.

His head hurts.

His heart hurts.

This is what’s on his mind after the third shower, staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror. His blonde hair is disheveled despite being fresh from a shower, and his eyes are red and rimmed with heavy bags. It’s been less than twenty four hour since he’s seen Fury, but it feels like several lifetimes. From finding out that your sort-of boyfriend is as good as dead, to hearing that he used to work for a nazi organization and grew up in the 50s, everything was starting to pile up on Clint’s shoulders.

Clint was starting to feel very, very overwhelmed.

There was hope, supposedly, for Bucky. Steve seemed to think so.

What had Barney said, when they were kids?

Make everything something to hit with, and hit them until they stop.

Clint lets out a long sigh, slipping in his hearing aids and pulling on a t-shirt and sweatpants that don’t fit him right, but are better than nothing.

“Alright,” Clint says as he enter the kitchen. Kate pauses mid coffee pour, her eyebrows raising and disappearing behind her bangs. She scrambles as the mug overflows and spills onto the table, swearing loudly. “How are we doing this?”

It can’t tell exactly how much time passes.

Sometimes they say the words, sometimes they don’t.

Either way, everything is foggy. It fades in and out, having lost the energy to fight long ago. There are flashes of, of things, of people and places and sounds. A dark and old apartment filled with nothing except a mattress and some boxes fades into a pleasant living room with pictures of fuzzy faces and a tv that just shows static, a low voice saying something about dancing and arrows and haircuts.

It shakes its head, trying to clear its brain of the fog, the concrete floor coming into focus for a moment underneath it before turning into an ugly green carpet that smells like rosemary and home. This time a woman’s voice is singing something high and sweet that makes it long to crawl into her arms and fall asleep.

It screams, loud enough that it pulls it out of the mist, banging the metal fist onto the floor. It screams so loud that it is sure someone will come to shut it up, to put a bullet in its head to get it over with.

But no one does.

There is a time when they try to activate The Asset, but when they say the words, all it can do is bring two fingers to its chin and make a motion pulling them down and away from its face until they inject something that forces it back into the fog.

Bucky thinks a lot about the choices he’s made up to this point.

There was a walk home, from, somewhere, he doesn’t remember. An alleyway, a man with a badge and a uniform and a gun that didn’t fire real bullets. Someone in a pristine lab coat saying the words, but, no, that doesn’t make sense, Hydra went down in—

You spend the better part of your life double and triple checking locks, looking underneath beds, taking the long way home, and obsessively honing your self defence skills, and where does that get you?

He’s clearly in a cell of some sort, but whether or not this is the sort of treatment that enhanced people usually get upon arrest is unclear. Instead of bars there is a heavy metal door, and there is no window or bed. All he has is the light in the ceiling and the occasional grunt that comes through the door. He’s pretty sure he had killed the first few people they sent in, but he had been in full Winter Soldier mode, so he’s not totally sure. Whoever had activated him hadn’t known how to turn it off, so he spent some time in an odd state of limbo where he was activated with no purpose, turning him into a foggy mess that didn’t know who to kill or who to trust. Eventually he ran out of steam and they started trying different things on him, like saying the code words and injecting him with something that makes him become loose and pliant, or, once, knocks him straight out.

He wishes they’d just kill him already. Isn’t that what they do to enhanced anyway?

Whoever is running this operation clearly doesn’t understand how the Winter Soldier works. They’re trying to figure that out, what gets him going and what stops it, and just what his limits are. Why had he been arrested just to become a test subject, left to practically rot away in this fucking cell? Or why hasn’t he been killed?

Bucky thumps his head uselessly against the door. He wonders if anyone outside it can hear him.

He shouldn’t have joined the fucking army.

Natasha Romanov takes her coffee black. America Chavez likes hers with only a little milk and cinnamon. Kate, per usual, makes hers with lots of milk and sugar. Steve Rogers does not drink coffee, but somehow finds bags of tea hidden in Clint’s cupboards and drinks that instead.

They all manage to fit in Clint’s kitchen. Kate, America, Steve, and Natasha at the table and Clint on the counter, Lucky underneath the table at Kate’s feet. They’re going on thirty hours of whatever it is they’re doing, talking, planning, something. They walk back and forth between the kitchen and the living room every once in a while, looking for something, anything, they can use to figure out exactly what it is that they’re going to do.

Steve explains that he had to visit the facility and steal some files, which is how he figured out how to contact Natasha and America.

“Fury doesn’t know you’re here?” asks Kate.

He takes a long sip of his tea and shakes his head. Steve looks over at Clint on the counter, then says, “I worry that he wouldn’t think it would be worth it. This isn’t the first fighter that’s been arrested, and it will hardly be the last.”

Clint forces himself to look up at the ceiling rather than at Steve’s sad face. Seventy five arrow holes in the kitchen, and twenty two are on the ceiling. He counts them now, each one a tap on the counter.

One, two, three, four…

“There’s not much we can do without the resources at the facility,” Natasha points out. “The combined forces of Stark’s tech and Fury’s information would do us wonders.”

America wanders out of her chair, bringing her mug with her into the living room. “I don’t get how Fury got our information. I certainly didn’t give it to him.” She moves along the edge of papers that Clint has created. They’ve hardly made a dent, even if they’ve already moved a decent amount of papers into the room. Pages that appear to be health updates with locations blacked out, or army files that declare Sergeant James Barnes KIA.

“Why don’t we just get in and get into Stark’s shit then?” Kate keeps her eyes on America through the doorway, her hands nervously fiddling with her own mug.

...fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...

“You’ve seen the security at the damn place, it’s nearly impossible to get in without being detected, much less get in and get out undetected,” Natasha says plainly, as if it’s obvious.

...nineteen, twenty, twenty one…

“There are twenty two points of entry, fifteen exits,” America calls from the living room. “I don’t see why we can’t shut a few down for a little while.”

Clint looks away from the ceiling, over at Kate. She’s looking back at him, and without missing a beat, raises a hand to point at him, then moves her hand down away from her chin. He just nods, hopping off the counter and moving into the living room, where America is crouched over one of the pages.

“There’s nothing we can do that Stark wouldn’t notice immediately,” says Steve.

There’s a paper that America is holding. Every single word is censored, except for a single photo in the top right corner of an empty street.

“Why don’t we just ask him?”

Clint can practically hear all of the heads turning towards him. Steve starts, “Ask—”

“Stark.”

Heavy silence. Lucky’s panting fills it. Then,

“That could—”

“He wouldn’t—”

Steve and Natasha start to talk over each other, Steve adamantly refusing to believe that Tony would help while Natasha makes a case for Clint. America looks over at Clint and gives him a lopsided smile. “They’ll never give in to each other, they’re both too stubborn.”

Clint thinks back to the time he watched Captain America tapout during a fight with Black Widow. “I’m not so sure.”

The paper America was holding lands back on top of something about a man named Helmut Zemo. Clint’s looked at it already, anyway.

“Stark seems like the type of guy who would get a kick out of helping our wayward cause,” Clint continues, moving back into the kitchen and taking the seat that America has abandoned. He takes a drink from Kate’s cup even if he prefers his coffee black. He’s starting to feel like he needs a nap. A nap and a house far, far away from Bed Stuy. “So, why don’t we just ask him. Walk right up to that tower of his, knock on the door, and ask.”

Waving a hand, Kate comes to his defense. “He has a point.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows smugly at Steve. He looks at her for a long minute, some sort of internal turmoil, before he dips his head and says, “fine.”

From inside the living room, America tosses a fist in the air. “Now we’re cooking.”

And with that, Clint stands, leaving the kitchen, walking through the living room, and retreating to his lonely room. He doesn’t need to look to know Lucky has followed, jumping onto the bed and looking up at Clint sadly, as if he is wondering where their third party is.

Clint crouches at the edge of the bed where Lucky lies, his one eye trained on Clint. He runs a hand through Lucky’s fur and rubs behind his ear, his tongue falling out the side of his mouth with a low huff. “I miss him, too,” Clint whispers. He feels like crying but can’t, his body tired of it. Lucky sits up enough press his nose into Clint’s eye, then his tongue against his cheek, as if sensing the imaginary tears that are falling. “We’ll get him back,” Clint promises, to Lucky and to himself, petting the dog once more before removing his hearing aids and crawling into bed, wondering if it truly smells like Bucky, or if he is imagining it.

When Kate slips in beside him, sometime later, Clint realizes that he couldn’t live without Bucky as much as he could not live without Kate.

Clint is sitting on a roof somewhere, a younger, clean cut Bucky Barnes beside him. His hair is cut to army regulation but still styled immaculately, and is donned in the same fancy greens Clint had seen in the picture earlier, but the sniper rifle in his hands suggests that he’s in combat . When Clint looks down he sees his bow in his hands, a single arrow sitting innocently on the ledge of the building that they are on.

There’s a cityscape in front of them, but it fades in and out, too hard to make out any details.

“Where are we?” asks Clint, his voice sounding muted and warbled, even in his own head. The young Bucky beside him looks through the scope on his rifle.

“A mission, of course.” He certainly sounds like the Bucky that Clint knows, but there is a smirk in his voice, a hint of playfulness and youth. “Didn’t you read my file?”

Clint startles, grabbing the arrow from the ledge and looking over the edge of the building. Something finally comes into focus, a single door on a building across the street. There are no people on the foggy streets, no one to enter the building and no one to leave it. When Clint looks over at Bucky, he is no longer looking through the rifle and is instead sitting back, his feet kicked up with his arms raised behind his head, all too relaxed.

“A mission,” Clint repeats. With one arrow? “I don’t—”

“Hush,” says Bucky suddenly, sitting up and looking through the scope. Clint looks too, then stands suddenly, shocked at what he sees.

Bucky, the version that Clint knows with long hair and a scruffy face and a metal arm, walks out of the building. He’s nearly moving in slow motion, face blank as he moves forward. He’s dressed all in black, with weapons strapped across his body, and Clint realizes that he’s looking at the Winter Soldier.

Young Bucky pulls Clint back down by his sleeve. “You’ll blow our cover,” he hisses, face twisted into something angry and unrecognizable. “Aren’t you going to take the shot?”

Clint means to grab at Young Bucky’s shoulder, but his hand goes right through him. “I can’t,” Clint pleads, looking into the cold blue eyes of the young man that Clint doesn’t know at all. “He’s still in there.” Bucky rolls his eyes, huffing and lifting his rifle.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” he mutters, looking down the scope just for a moment before pulling the trigger.

There is a shot that rings through the air and Clint shouts, throwing out his arm, but he is falling suddenly, over the edge and away from the Bucky that Clint doesn’t know.

He wakes up before he can hit the ground.

For a moment Clint just feels someone beside him, and wonders if the last day and a half have been a dream. But Kate’s hair is longer and darker than Bucky’s, splayed out on the pillow beside her head. Lucky is sitting patiently by the door, looking back and forth between the bed and the door, his mouth hanging open.

Clint lets out a long breath that he didn’t know he had been holding, his heart beat steadying into something that makes it easier for him to set his feet on the carpet, put his hearing aids in, and open the door. It’s only once Lucky is rushing out of the bedroom and to the front door that Clint notices the sound of incessant knocking.

It’s hard to say how much time has passed since Clint abandoned the others for his bedroom, but sunlight is spilling through the curtains when it had been dark when he fell asleep, so something tells him it hasn’t been an absurdly long time. Natasha and America being sprawled over the furniture that's crowded together adds to the theory. Steve is nowhere to be seen.

“Wha—”

Tony Stark is already rambling as he steps through the open door and around Clint. “About damn time,” Tony is saying, carrying a cardboard box filled with electronics, “I’ve been knocking for, what, ten minutes?”

“You know I’m deaf right—”

“And at this time of day, no less” he continues, stepping into the kitchen and setting the box on the table. “This isn’t usually the sort of thing I’d do but Stars and Stripes put on his puppy face begged for my assistance.”

Clint stares at Tony. He hadn’t really expected him to be on their side, much less randomly show up to his apartment. “Where’s Steve?” asks Clint skeptically.

Tony waves a hand, pulling out a device that looks like a miniature satellite. “Has to check in with some official government people every morning since he’s on the enhanced list.”

“So that's where he went yesterday morning. He wasn’t just getting…” Clint pauses, looking awkwardly at Tony. “Things.”

“I am well aware that the star spangled man with a plan snuck into the facility.” Clint doesn’t get the reference, but Tony is continuing before he can even ask. “That man doesn’t have an ounce of stealth in that ridiculous body.”

The sound of Tony taking everything out of the box and rambling on about Steve taking what doesn’t belong to him finally wake someone else up, a disheveled Natasha stepping into the kitchen. She takes one look at Stark, heaves a long sigh, then moves to the counter to begin making more coffee. “You miss me, Miss Romanov?” Tony says, raising his eyebrows at her back. Clint takes the seat next to Tony, glancing over all of the equipment he has taken out. Several computers, the thing that’s shaped like a satellite, and a pile of things that just look like junk to Clint.

“Do you think you can find him?” asks Clint.

Shrugging, Tony grabs a cord from one of the computers and reaches around Natasha to plug it in next to the coffee machine. She glares at him as he responds, “Not sure. We tried to put a tracker in that arm of his forever ago, but he destroyed it as soon as he was out of my sight. He would never be found if he didn’t want to.”

Clint thinks back to that first night they met, when he had found one of the fifteen exits from the facility and Bucky had stopped to question him. They had fumbled around each other, neither one of them knowing exactly what to do. Bucky had been pissed off and worried that Clint was going to turn him in, and Clint had been afraid and flustered.

That was months ago.

Look at us now, Clint thinks, rubbing his forehead and glancing over at Tony. Nothing remains of Bucky in the apartment, nothing except that stupid fucking file. No pictures, because Bucky refused to take them. No notes, no traces, nothing to be found, just like Tony says.

“Is it a lost cause?”

Stark looks up, studying Clint. He takes him in, the whole mess of him. Clint can’t tell if there is pity hidden in his gaze.

“Be honest,” continues Clint.

He rubs his facial hair, glancing back down at his unfinished computer setup, then up at the ceiling, before Tony finally settles on Clint again. Over his shoulder, Natasha’s eyes flick around Tony’s person, the shoulders, his hands and feet, analyzing his body language. Finally, Tony says, “I think I can find him. Whether or not he’ll be sane isn’t something I can guarantee.”

That’s enough for Clint. Hope, something he had been trying to shove away, starts to bubble in his chest. Tony Stark, of all people, was giving him hope.

Clint leans back in his chair, letting the feeling settle and his shoulders loosen. Tony was going to find Bucky, they were going to come up with a plan. And then what?

Barney didn’t answer the phone when Clint called hours ago, and had not called back. Clint hadn’t left a message, either, but he didn’t even know what to say. There was promise of a house, a haven far away from New York. Big open fields for Lucky, places for targets for him and Kate. A home for Bucky where he would never have to worry about what may be hiding around the corner. “I’ll be right back,” Clint mutters while Tony takes a breath from talking to Natasha as she sits down. He can feel her careful gaze on him as he reenters the living room and goes back into his bedroom.

Kate is still asleep. He doesn’t bother waking her as he sits on the edge of the bed, digging around the blankets and looking for his cell phone. It’s nearly dead, so he plugs it into the wall and leans in close as he punches in the numbers he has memorized at this point.

It rings for a few seconds. Clint’s leg bounces nervously.

“Y’ello?”

Pause. Clint didn’t think he’d get this far.

“Barney?”

“...Clint?”

He has to mentally slap himself. “Yeah, yeah it’s me. I called earlier, but…”

“Jesus Christ Clint, what time is it over there?”

Clint glances at the clock. 6:38am. “Early. Been a long few days.”

There’s some noise on the other side of the phone, like a gust of wind is blowing past Barney. It’s loud, enough so that it makes Clint pull his ear away from the phone for a moment.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” says Barney. He doesn’t sound sorry, but continues, “so are you calling me this early in the morning just to say hi?”

Clint rolls his eyes. “You know why I’m calling.”

“No need to get snarky. You’re talking to your brother for the first time in years and this is the thanks I get?”

“Barney, please. I told you I’ve had a long few days.”

Another stretch of silence. More wind hits Barney’s phone, but nothing loud enough to hurt. He finally says, “well, it’s like I said. It’s yours if you want it.”

He wants it. So desperately, so much that he can feel it in his bones. Clint grabs a fistful of the blanket and closes his eyes, trying to ground himself. If they can just get Bucky, Stark could figure out how to get them there—

“I need some details, first.”

“Three bedrooms, two baths, two floors. A basement for… storage, if you need that. A barn full of junk. All furnished, mostly old stuff that we found for sale around the area. In Ireland, on land built for farming, though I can’t imagine that interests you or your lady.”

Clint looks over at where Kate is on the bed, one arm tossed over her eyes and the other outstretched towards him. He delicately picks up her hand as Barney tells him all about the place they could run away to. She doesn’t want that, he recalls, and sucks in a tight breath. He, Bucky, and Lucky, in a farmhouse in Ireland, both of them away from their best friends.

“She won��t be coming,” says Clint, can practically feel the sadness dripping in his voice. She has a life here, in school, with friends and America Chavez.

“Bad breakup making you wanna run away?”

“What? No! She’s my best friend, and she has a life outside of me.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. So, I’ll mail you the address—”

“There’s not really time for that. If this all goes well, I’ll be there in a few days.”

Another sound on Barney’s end, not wind this time, and not very loud. Clint suspects that Barney accidentally knocked something over. “What the fuck are you getting yourself into?”

“I’ll explain another time.”

“Does this have anything to do with work?”

“No. Well, maybe. In a roundabout way.”

Barney sounds a little out of breath, his voice louder and probably closer to the receiver. “I swear to God, Clint, be careful.” That wasn’t how he expected the sentence to end, but Barney is continuing before Clint can get a word in. “I’m a shitty brother but that doesn't mean I want you dead. Do you know what you’re getting into?”

“Careful, Barn.”

“Do you?” Barney says, more forceful this time.

Does he? Clint doesn’t know. Tony’s working on locating Bucky. Where they go from there is to be determined. He’s holding on to that hope, that they can figure this out, and maybe live to tell the tale. “It’s like, ah, hide and seek,” Clint breathes. “We’re seeking, right now. Hiding is... well, it’s somewhere down the line.”

For as stupid as Clint once considered Barney, he seems to understand. “Don’t hit so hard that it becomes an issue.”

“I’m going to try not to.”

After a few seconds, Barney questions, “is it worth it, Clint?”

Clint answers without hesitation. “Yes.”

“Well then, I’ll take your word for it. You got an email or something? I can figure out how to get that address to you without… You know.”

He lists off an email that he stopped checking years ago, the hope that had been sitting in his chest shifting into something more like desire. Clint is no longer just hoping for the best— action is settling into his bones and muscles and blood, ready to do this, whatever this is.

“I gotta go, Clint.”

“Alright.”

Barney hesitates, says, “good luck,” and hangs up.

That checks out with how he remembers Barney. Clint exhales, setting his phone on the nightstand and shifting so he lies next to Kate. Her arm is resting across her chest and her eyes are open, trained on the ceiling. Their hands are still linked. His hands are big and scarred, while hers are thin and delicate, the nails painted purple.

“Did you hear very much?”

Kate stares up at the ceiling, waving a hand. “A little.” She sniffs, finally rolling onto her side to look at him. “Enough.”

The silence that settles between them is comfortable, but can hardly be considered silence. Tony can be heard talking in the other room, occasionally America, apparently awake, or Natasha butting in.

“I’ll miss you,” Kate says lightly, blue eyes searching Clint’s face.

“I’m not…” Clint means to finish with leaving yet, but he chokes on his words. Clearing his throat and knocking their foreheads together, he whispers instead, “I don’t want to leave you.”

“You’re running away from this stupid country with the guy you’re head over heels for, you shouldn’t be thinking of me.” Her voice doesn’t waver as she says it, but for a moment Clint can see through the chinks in her well built armour, the way her eyes flicker with worry and her lips pressing firmly together.

“You know I love you, right Katie?” It’s not the first time he’s ever said it, not by a long shot, but he feels the need to remind her, suddenly.

Kate reaches forward with her left hand, the one not holding Clint’s, brushing back his hair with a delicate touch. “If you love something, let it go, right?”

Clint scoffs through a smile, pressing his hand into her face and twisting so he’s on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Kate shifts beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder. Their hands do not separate even once.

Sixteen arrow holes in the ceiling. He doesn’t bother counting them.

“For what it’s worth, I love you too.”

It’s worth everything.

He has nothing to say to that, so they slip into quiet once more. Clint thinks of the Bucky shaped hole in his heart, of the love that was, is, blossoming there, and where they will go after this whole thing blows over, assuming it does. When they find where Bucky is being kept, when they come up with a plan, when they break him out of there, when, when, when…

Just as Clint starts to think in if, there is a knock at the door. Kate lifts up her head, most of her hair stuck to the side of her face. Clint busies himself with pulling the hairs away carefully as Kate calls, “what?”

Steve says something behind the door that is muffled enough for Clint not to catch it, but Kate does. She presses her hand to her forehead and closes her eyes, shouting back, “alright, we’ll be back out in a second.” Clint follows when she sits up, pressing her mouth to the back of Clint’s hand. “Stark got everything set up, time to get to work.”

Clint just nods, watching as she slips out of bed, their hands coming apart at long last. Their fingers fall away from each other without any attention or fanfare. Clint wonders if maybe there should have been.

They all look like shit, Clint notes once they gather in the kitchen. Tony takes up most of the table space, so Kate, Natasha, and America sit further back in their chairs with matching perplexed looks, coffee cups held close to their chests. Steve leans in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, letting Clint take a spot on the counter. What surface Tony hasn’t taken over is covered in papers that Tony and Steve have deemed important, or, rather, readable, snippets of information slipping through the cracks here and there.

They’re going to run out of coffee soon.

“If your theory is true, that Hydra is running the government and started the accords, that still doesn’t tell us where they could have a base.” Tony rubs his forehead, looking over his computer at Steve. “Who's to say they’re not just keeping him in a police station?”

“They wouldn’t do that, not with…” A dangerous weapon. “Not with Bucky.”

“It’s been two days,” Natasha points out, “why are we assuming they’re even in this country?”

“Hydra wouldn’t risk getting him out of the country, not yet at least,” Steve swears, looking confident.

Clint can feel his heart beat in his ears. “It’s not like the police have a missing persons case on their hands,” he says, bitterly. “No one except us knew he existed.”

“And Hydra, apparently,” America interjects, looking pointedly at Steve from behind her mug. “We’re working off a lot of assumptions, maybe he’s just arrested and sitting in a jail somewhere?”

“That’s what Fury seemed to think,” Clint recalls. Fury had said something about death’s row and government custody. At that point, Bucky is as good as dead.

He didn’t know what was worse— the thought of Bucky arrested, a death sentence awaiting him, or having Hydra in control, turning him back into the Winter Soldier.

“What I don’t understand,” says Kate, “is why Hydra, an organization that you supposedly brought down,” she points at Steve, not unacccusingly but not mean either, “suddenly reappears ten years later with a personal vendetta out for enhanced people.”

Steve opens his mouth, but Natasha cuts in before he can say anything. “‘Cut off one head, two more will take its place’,” she recites, ignoring everyone’s watchful gaze. “That’s Hydra’s slogan. They’re based on the principle that it’s impossible to get rid of them all.”

“Like the worst case of bedbugs you’ve ever seen,” replies Tony. Clint can’t tell how seriously he’s taking the situation.

Natasha twists in her chair to look at Steve, ignoring Tony’s comment. “Ten years ago, you wiped out most of Hydra, when you pulled Bucky out of the brainwashing. A few years later, the accords are put in place, and SHIELD, the government organization in charge of handling the enhanced, whose poster boy is their worst enemy, and his best friend is Hydra’s greatest weapon, goes down with the ship. Hydra, who has infiltrated our government, uses the accords to start taking down its greatest threats.”

“But that’s me,” Steve says, visibly confused. “I was just put on the watch list, not put in a prison or killed like they do with nearly everyone else.”

The pieces start to fall into place in Clint’s brain. “They didn’t execute or imprison Steve because they knew that he would know Bucky’s whereabouts.”

Tony stops typing, sitting straight and stock still as he stares at Clint. “Are you saying—”

“Bucky is the reason for the accords.” Clint’s voice sounds so quiet in his own head that he’s not sure anyone else hears it. There is a moment, just a millisecond for the pin to drop. Everyone runs the revelation over in their heads, and then, movement. Steve presses a hand to his face and promptly turns away and out of the room. Natasha manages to find a spot on the table for his coffee, moving swiftly after him. Tony leans back in his chair, a perplexed look gracing his features, speechless for maybe the first time ever. America presses her fingers to her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. Kate, her mouth hanging open, looks worriedly at Clint.

Clint cannot find it within himself to feel anything.

“You call that a shot?” Bucky laughs, leaning over the ledge to look down at the busy street. A group of pigeons investigate the apple slice that Clint just threw at them, pecking at it incessantly.

“Oh please, that was perfect and you know it.” Clint reaches for the plate of sliced apples that sits on the ground between them, grabbing and slipping one into his mouth this time, instead of down onto the street for the pigeons. “I’d like to see you do better.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows and gives Clint a sly smirk. “Pick a target, baby, I’ll hit it every time.”

The smirk slips into a warm laugh as Clint shoves at his shoulder. “Shut up.” His teasing tone can’t hide the pink of his cheeks. Clint doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that, to Bucky. Still, he leans forward and to the side a little, enough to press their shoulders together. “That brick, the one that’s lighter than all the other ones.” Clint points to the building next door, stretching his arm across Bucky’s body. Sure enough, there is a pink brick amongst dark red ones. “Think you could hit that with your eyes closed?”

A scoff slips out of Bucky’s mouth, close to Clint’s ear. They’re nearly on top of each other, now, comfortable and knowing. “Obviously.”

Bucky grabs one of the apple slices, breaking it in half. He holds the piece in his right hand, shifting his shoulder back and raising his arm. Clint, on his left side, hovers close, pressing his mouth to the soft bit of skin behind Bucky’s ear. He stills, arm still in the air but not stiff like he’s tense. Just unmoving.

“Aren’t you going to take the shot?” Clint teases.

Their lips connect in a second, Bucky’s arm lowering and wrapping around Clint’s neck, placing him nicely in the crook of his elbow. “I can’t,” Bucky jokes, pulling away for a moment to look into Clint’s eyes. Blue meets blue, warm and inviting. “Not with you there, asshole.”

They both taste like apples, but that’s no surprise, mouths slipping together once again. “Fine, I’ll do it,” says Clint between their breaths, left hand moving up to Bucky’s hand that’s still holding the apple piece, reaching around him and tossing the slice without bothering to look. Bucky turns his head just as the apple connects with the pink brick and falls into a garbage can below.

Bucky laughs, something high and sweet, his hand at the back of Clint’s neck pressing into his hair and bringing their mouths together once more. Clint loses himself in Bucky’s touch, in the warm hand on the back of his head and the nudge of his nose against Clint’s cheek. He throws an arm out, holding onto the ledge of the building so he does not slip any further into Bucky than he already has.

Clint would not mind hitting the ground, if this is what falling feels like.

New York feels oddly quiet and lonely.

It’s nearing 8am, meaning the streets will start to get busy as people begin their commute to work, but for now, there isn’t much more than a dozen cars on the street at a time and one or two people leaving buildings.

Clint rests his elbows on the ledge, both of his legs tucked up underneath him. The rain stopped sometime while he was asleep, he thinks, leaving behind a cloudy sky and the murky sort of heat that warns of the summer to come. Nothing like summer in Bed Stuy, Clint thinks bitterly, when the air conditioning in his apartment doesn’t work and all the tenants of the building gather up here on the roof to grill food and pretend that the world isn’t falling apart around them.

Maybe he’s just being pessimistic.

He groans, loudly enough to startle a pigeon that had settled a few feet away, digging the palms of his hands into his eyes so hard he sees white spots. Clint should have known that it was too good to last. He shouldn’t have gotten so attached, he shouldn’t have kissed him, he shouldn’t have taken Bucky out for a beer, he shouldn’t have let Kate take him to the Initiative. There were so many moments, so many times where if it had stopped, they would not be where they are now. Bucky would not be in the hands of Hydra, or the government, or whoever, and Clint would not be sitting by himself on the roof of his building, thinking about this.

Yet, he wouldn’t take any of it back. Every touch, every kiss, was worth it.

“God,” Clint mutters, pulling his hands away from his face and staring up at the grey clouds, squinting and focusing on the flickering spots that remain. “This is the worst.”

“I’m sorry,” calls someone. Clint whips around, one hand going to touch a hearing aid as he stares at Steve.

“Not very many people can sneak up on me,” he says bitterly, thinking of how often Bucky did and turning back to look over the ledge. Steve must take that as an invitation to approach, stopping next to Clint but not sitting down. “Stark said you’re not stealthy.”

“Tony doesn’t know me very well.”

Clint looks up and over at Steve, raising his eyebrows. Steve returns the gaze, no pity in his eyes. He repeats, “I’m sorry.”

Sniffing, Clint wipes at his face and averts his eyes. “You lost him too.”

Steve apparently has nothing to say to that, moving on. “He doesn’t like to talk about you, you know.” Clint doesn’t. “You’re like something sacred to him.”

He’s careful with his words, saying doesn’t instead of didn’t, clinging to hope like Clint clings to their memories. Clint doesn’t know what to say to him, so lets his words settle in his brain. Something sacred. His mouth tastes like apples.

“But, he had said that you guys were planning on… running away together.”

Clint scoffs. Hopeful is the word that comes to mind. They were hopeful, that they’d figure out a way to get Bucky out of the country and to Barney’s house. Hopeful and blissfully falling in love.

The ground doesn’t feel so nice.

“And Kate had said, that you’d do it, if you figured out how.”

So that’s where he’s going with this.

Clint rubs his face and speaks into his hands instead of Steve. “I don’t know how much faith I have in myself to get us there.”

“You’re not alone in this. Tony’s going to track him down, America, Nat, and I are some of the best hand to hand fighters in the Initiative that aren’t Bucky, and, well, you know Kate. You don’t need me to tell you that she has your six.”

When Clint looks over at Steve once more, his hand is extended. “What about you?” Clint asks, once he has had a moment to stare at the hand. “We make it out of this, we get Bucky and I to Europe. What do the rest of you guys do?”

Steve doesn’t lower his hand, but looks pensive before he answers. “Take down a regime, expose Hydra for everything that they are and what they’ve done to this country. Maybe go on vacation.”

With that, Clint take’s Steve’s hand, pulling himself up until they’re eye to eye. “I think we’ve earned one, Captain.”

It takes three days.

Clint receives an email on the second day from a user that is just a string of letters and numbers, the contents of the email just names of books, which Clint pieces together to be the coordinates for the house once he searches for them online and does some digging. Tony stays in the apartment for the most part, sending Kate or America to his tower to get something if he needs it. Steve leaves every morning and always returns around noon, ready to help Clint and Natasha sort through all of Bucky’s files. One night, the same day Barney emails, the three fighters and Tony have to go to the facility to participate in the Initiative, returning battered and bruised but with duffels and backpacks containing tactical gear, jumping back into it without another word. They found a system that works, all the way up until the point that Stark makes the call.

Apparently Tony had been digging through the government’s data files, how he got access to those Clint doesn’t know, when he had found a secure folder hidden in another series of folders. Natasha had left that morning with Steve, so they aren’t around when Tony finally says, “I think I found it.”

America, who was sitting beside Stark, bolts up and out of her chair so quickly that she becomes a blur of red, white, and blue, the papers on the counter going flying. Clint scrambles to catch them as Kate hurries over to Tony as well. “Found what,” America says, leaning over Tony’s shoulder to look at the screen.

“Evidence of Hydra in the United States government, what do you think?” Tony looks up and over the computer to focus on Clint, who has very purposefully been keeping his movements to fix the papers on the counter controlled and calm. “If I can get into this, I can figure out where he is, or find someone who does, at least.”

Slowly, Clint meets his gaze. “Are you one hundred percent positive?”

Be honest, Clint had said four days ago, when Tony first arrived. He looks the same way he had then, rubbing his facial hair pensively, looking anywhere but at Clint, then settling on him. “If this file is what I think it is, and if it contains the information that I hope it will… then, yes. One hundred percent.”

Over Tony’s shoulder, Kate’s face slips into something like relief. Whether it’s for Clint or just for the fact that the whole ordeal will be over soon, he can’t tell for sure.

America nudges Tony. “Well, get at it Stark, we’re don’t exactly have a ton of time.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Steve and Nat to get back?” Kate asks, eyes moving between Tony and Clint.

“Yes, let’s.” Tony pushes his chair away from the table, stretching as he stands. “First, nap, then I’ll expose our corrupt government and a nazi organization.” He waves a finger at Clint as he moves into the living room. “And hopefully save your boyfriend along the way.”

With that, Tony promptly walks to the couch, which is back in the middle of the room where it belongs, and crashes.

Kate lowers herself into the chair next to America, crossing one leg over the other and leaning an elbow on the table. “He’s certainly nothing like I expected him to be,” she notes.

“You get used to him,” replies America, shooting Kate a look. It’s Clint’s turn to look between them, raising his eyebrows. Catching Kate’s eye, he signs cute, a smile tugging at his lips. She glares at him, raising her hand and pulling all of her fingers together in front of her mouth, telling him to shut up. Her cheeks are a suspicious shade of pink.

It’s only 8am so Clint tries to busy himself while they wait for Natasha and Steve to return. The sink is leaking again so he fixes it while Kate and America chat at the table. The sink doesn’t take very long so he takes Lucky on a walk, one of the few times he has bothered leaving the apartment, but he’s back before ten, so he sits by himself on the roof and tries not to think about Bucky.

When that doesn’t work he heads back to the apartment, Kate and America still at the table, unmoved. He walks right past them, through the living room and into his bedroom, stopping at the foot of his bed and crouching to grab the duffel bag from where it sits underneath the bed. The contents rattle as he sets it on the bed, pulling out his bow and an arrow.

He crawls on top of the unmade bed, settling on his back in the middle, face up towards the ceiling. Counting to sixteen over and over, Clint begins to lose track of time. The bow in one hand and the arrow in the other.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…

Clint twists his body and raises the bow, pulling back his arm holding the air, pressing uncomfortably into the mattress, taking the shot.

Seventeen arrow holes in the ceiling of the bedroom.

The arrow sticks in the ceiling, reverbing a few times before coming to a stop. Clint stares at it, sighing as he lays back down fully on the bed, lying on his stomach and shoving his face into the pillow.

Just as he begins to relax, his heartbeat slowing down and thoughts turning to a more manageable topic (whether or not he should do laundry), Kate calls his name. Rolling over and bringing his pillow with him, Clint tosses his arms across it to press it further into his face. It does a decent job at muffling the frustrated scream that falls out of his mouth.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t make him feel any better.

Slowly pulling himself up, Clint starts to feel as if he had been sleeping for twenty hours, rather than lying down and staring at the ceiling for forty minutes. He stands on the bed, pulling the arrow from the ceiling before jumping down and putting the arrow and the duffel back where they belong, under the bed.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Natasha says as Clint steps out of the room. It takes him a moment to realize that she isn’t talking to him, but rather to Stark, who is still laying on the couch, but his eyes are open and squinting at the redhead leaning over the back and staring down at him. Steve is beside her, but isn’t looking at Tony. He talks over his shoulder to Kate in the kitchen, a slight frown gracing his features.

If they heard Clint in the bedroom they don’t say anything as he moves into the kitchen. The clock on the microwave says it’s 11:12am, so Steve and Natasha are back earlier than usual.

“Have you told them yet?” asks Clint as he grabs the bag of bread from where it sits on top of the fridge.

“Well,” America starts.

“Told us what?” Steve cuts in abruptly, bringing an end to he and Kate’s conversation.

Tony appears from behind the couch, tossing his legs over the side and standing. “Hold your horses, soldier.” He takes a long, agonizing moment to stretch, his back popping audibly. Clint puts the bread in the toaster just as Tony finishes, continuing, “I may have found some Hydra files while perusing through Government and old SHIELD files. Give me a little while to get into them, and I can hopefully find your guy in a few hours.”

The frown that Steve had been wearing slips into something akin to determination. “And you were taking a nap?” he says, mostly joking. Tony shoot him a look, stepping around him and into the kitchen. The toaster ticks away.

Natasha trails behind Tony as he steps into the kitchen and sits in his usual spot. Steve stares at her back, watching her movements carefully. She leans over Stark as he sits down and opens all of his computers, eyes trained on the screen directly in front of him. Kate huffs, standing and stepping into Clint’s space, squinting her eyes as she looks through him. There’s nothing she can’t see and doesn’t know already, so he just raises his eyebrows at her and grabs the toast when it pops up. She points at him, taps her right pointer finger to the left with a slight shake of the head, moves her thumb from underneath her chin to underneath her hand, hooks her finger and moves it away from her hand, then points at herself. You cannot hide from me.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint mutters, stepping around her and getting into the fridge. “I know.”

Toast with jam tastes good when you’ve hardly eaten in five days.

Tony glances up at the five of them. “I’d suggest making some plans, if you haven’t already. As soon as I open this thing, I imagine it won’t be long before they figure out someone is snooping where they shouldn’t be.”

They all look at each other, as if waiting for someone to move first. Then, they’re all moving, Natasha stepping away from Tony and beginning to dig through one of the drawers. America appears next to Kate and drags her away towards the living room, followed closely by Steve.

Clint shoves the rest of the toast into his mouth, barely tasting it as he chews and swallows. He opens the drawer closes to him, pulling out a pen and notepad. Natasha takes it when he passes it to her, looking at him, not through him like Kate did, but certainly strongly and intensely enough to make his stomach stir. When she breaks her stare, stepping around him and into the living room, he feels inclined to join.

By 4pm, they have a plan.

By 6, a location.

Tony finds documents detailing a complicated route to a maximum security prison in Connecticut. Google says that when the accords came into place they transferred civilian prisoners elsewhere, renovating the prison for enhanced. It was mysteriously never filled and disappeared into history, replaced instead by the more practical Raft (Clint had always believed the Raft to be a myth. Steve confirms that its existence is very, very real). There has supposedly been activity around the old prison; lights on around the area, trucks that move from the location to the city at routine times, and people decked out in gear hovering around the place. Tony matches this convoy to the one talked about in the Hydra files, used for transporting The Asset. No one has to speak up or check the files to know that that is referring to Bucky.

From there they break, agreeing to meet at Stark Tower in an hour and a half. Kate stays with Clint, and Tony takes Lucky, promising to take good care of him in the short amount of time he will be away from them.

Kate comes out of the bedroom donned in her purple jumpsuit, sans shoes and some clothes tossed over her shoulder, tugging at the belt around her hips, possibly fitting more snug than it had years ago. “You know, I had hoped that the first time I put this thing on it would be in better circumstances. And that maybe I’d have lost weight.”

“We’re not as spry as we used to be,” says Clint, stretching and cracking his back. He digs around in the duffel bag, finding and passing Kate her gloves. She stuffs them into the top of the suit, where her arm meets her chest, part of them poking out of the hole on her shoulder. Her hair falls across one side of her shoulder, pushed back by the purple headband. Clint feels about six years younger, for a moment, watching Kate reach around him to dig around in the bag. They’ve done this, get ready to do something heroic and dangerous, thousands of times.

“It’s probably too dark for these, right?” She holds up the purple sunglasses, the small smile she saves for Clint gracing her mouth. “What about you?”

Clint’s own pair are in her other hand. “Too dark,” he agrees, but takes them and slips them into his quiver, which sits in the bottom of the bag next to hers. They can’t take them out, not yet.

The sound of the chair beside him scraping against the floor forces him to look over at her. She pokes his chest, right at the midpoint of the arrow as it starts to point down. “Are you ready, Hawkeye?”

He meets her eye. “Are you ready, Hawkeye?”

“Clint.”

“I don’t know, ready for what?”

“For… all of it. The fight. Seeing Bucky. Running away.”

Clint taps his hand on his thigh to keep it from shaking. “Do you think I should pack another bag, or something?”

She snorts. “A duffel bag full of pointy sticks from the paleolithic era is hardly enough to run away—” Kate cuts herself off, exhaling and looking at the clock on the microwave. “If you see Bucky, like that, you know what to do. You won’t freeze?”

“No.” His voice wavers as he says it.

Kate pats his face affectionately despite the wary look on her face. “I’ll take good care of the apartment. I’ll write, or call, whatever we can do...” She stands, suddenly, stepping out of the kitchen and into the living room. When she returns, not long after, her hands are full of picture frames. A small pile of sticky notes sit on top.

Gingerly, she sets them into the bag, between their arrows and quivers. Clint stands, pulling her into his arms and pressing his mouth to the side of her face. It feels final, even though they have a few hours left.

Ten minutes later, they have t-shirts and jeans thrown over their tactical gear, Clint’s hands stuffed in his jacket pockets and the duffel bag hanging from Kate’s shoulder. The keys are in her hand as he takes one last glance around the apartment. The crack in the mirror, the remaining sticky notes on the nightstand, three hundred and twenty eight arrow holes. Old furniture that has somehow remained comfortable, and a TV that's broken too many times. “Don’t redecorate too much,” Clint chokes out as Kate locks the door behind them.

She bumps his shoulder with her own. “I told you I’ll take good care of it.”

Clint smiles at her, his first one in hours, and knows that she will.

A far away sound wakes Bucky up.

It’s not close, not yet, at least. But it was loud enough to startle Bucky’s well trained ears. He pulls himself up from the floor, stumbling to the door until he can steady himself by pressing his hands against it. Hair hangs in front of his eyes as he focuses on what may lie beyond the walls of this cell. Sounds, loud sounds, yelling, maybe, or screaming? The haze in his mind begins to clear, his left hand scratching hard enough at the door to leave scrapes, but nothing substantial enough to get him out. He groans, shoving his shoulder against the door. There isn’t much strength left in him, it’s been a while since they’ve fed him but longer since they’ve activated him.

The screech of the metal hand on the door almost masks another sound coming from outside the door. This one is close, and repeated, over and over and over, getting louder—

Bucky takes a long, staggered step back as the familiar sound of metal creaking fills his ears, the door swinging open. It’s not one of the usual agents they send in like he expects. A small, balding man rushes in, his white labcoat stained with blood on his arms. Another explosion comes from somewhere, louder now that the door is open and close enough that the walls shakes and dust falls from the ceiling. Bucky is startled enough to not immediately attack the scientist or rush around him to the door, but barely has a chance to step forward before the man is speaking.

“Желание, cемнадцать—”

A scream slips past Bucky’s mouth, his hands immediately covering his ears instead of to the neck of the scientist like he wishes he could do. Not again, I’m too tired—

“—oдин, tоварный вагон,” finishes the scientist.

“готов соблюдать,” responds The Asset, its’ hands falling to its’ sides.

The scientist just manages to get out the word kill before an arrow pierces his skull, his body collapsing pathetically to the floor. The Asset barely spares a glance at the body as it steps over it.

Past the doorway and in the hallway, a man stands nearly up against the wall, his arm drawn back and an arrow pointed at The Asset. Blood runs down one side of his face, soaking his blonde hair. The Asset can’t find any other external injuries, so it goes for the hands first, lunging forward to knock over the man and grab at the fingers with the metal hand.

He’s a surprisingly good fighter, though, taking The Asset by surprise. “Bucky!” he says through gritted teeth, grabbing The Asset’s flesh hand and shoving it away, rolling until he is on top, a knee pressed to The Asset’s gut. It’s only incapacitated for a moment or two, something in its brain stuttering before it can reach up and grasp the side of the man’s head, the bloodied side, digging its’ fingers into whatever it finds there. The man shouts, the hand that had been holding The Asset’s neck automatically going to grasp at it’s wrist, tugging it away until something small, purple, and bloody goes with it. The hearing aid lands on the floor a few feet away from them.

Kill echoes through The Asset’s mind as its bloodied hand moves back and around the man while he is distracted, grabbing an arrow from the quiver on his back and pulling it from the sheath.

The man takes one look at the arrow that The Asset has pulled, his eyes widening as he drops the bow and tugs out the other hearing aid just as The Asset registers the light click that the arrow emits before it explodes.

It doesn’t explode, it realizes, not really, but the sound it makes is so loud that The Asset’s eyes roll back into its head, hands going back to its ears as they had before, why had I been doing that in the first place is Clint okay—

The man’s face appears in The Asset’s line of sight from where it lies prone on the floor, ringing so loud in its ears that it could be vibrating. His mouth moves, but The Asset can’t hear it. Kill uttered again, but when The Asset lifts its metal hand it makes no move to attack, lightly brushing the back of it against the man’s neck. The Asset expects him to smile, for some reason, something soft and warm and saved only for him, but he doesn’t. Instead he grabs the bow from where he had dropped it nearby, retrieves his hearing aids, stuffing them into a pocket, then hauls The Asset up. Again, it moves to kill, like it had been told, but it just presses two fingers to its chin, pulling them down.

He holds up the hand that is holding loosely to the bow and isn’t holding up The Asset, moving his hand up and down like he’s knocking on a door, then repeats the move that The Asset had done. Yes, cute.

Kill, The Asset tries to form the words in its mouth but can’t, and its metal hand isn’t moving like how it wants. The man isn’t paying enough attention to it as he forces them around a corner, promptly dropping The Asset and raising his bow towards something it cannot see as its head connects with the floor.

The next thing Bucky knows, he’s leaning against Clint’s shoulder, face pressed to his back. They’re outside, he thinks, up against a wall as Clint looks around a corner, an arrow notched but not drawn back. “Clint,” he mutters, lips pressed to the leathery fabric of Clint’s shirt. Bucky’s mouth tastes like copper and his ears are ringing, distant sounds of an alarm and yelling muffled like there is cotton stuffed in there. Despite all of that, the worst feeling is that of his head, like someone had taken a fork and had mashed to their heart’s content. “Clint,” Bucky repeats, with more force, his bloodstained right hand pressing at Clint’s side.

Clint leans, just a little, into Bucky’s touch, but does not acknowledge his voice. The last he had known, Bucky was in a hazy Winter Soldier mode, the sonic arrow throwing him into a state of disrepair. Bucky tries to roll his head to the side, just a little, to get a better look at Clint’s face, but he’s a good few inches taller than Bucky is, so it’s a harder feat than it should be. Blood is running down the side of his head that Bucky is on, from a cut or gash that must be hidden in his blonde hair. His cheekbone is bruised, and there’s a cut on his lip, but other than that…

There’s blood, dry and crusted over on the skin behind Clint’s ear, but no familiar purple block underneath the crimson. “Oh,” Bucky groans, feeling stupid. The hand that was pressed to Clint’s side creeps up to the shoulder that Bucky isn’t leaning on. In morse, Bucky taps, H-E-R-E.

Without missing a beat, Clint’s head whips around, eyes brightening. He pushes them away from the corner, closer to the middle of the wall. “Christ,” he breathes, strong hands clutching at Bucky’s shoulders, then up to his neck and face. Bucky tries not to collapse when his grip loosens, but focuses on Clint’s slightly muffled words. “I thought I had lost you.” His voice is slightly warped, as he struggles to hear his own voice.

“I’m harder to get rid of than this,” Bucky says weakly. His throat feels like sandpaper as he speaks, and wonders if Clint can even hear him. Both of his hands hold up their thumbs, moving down and out towards Clint, then two fingers posed like a claw connecting with his fist. Try hard.

That’s enough for Clint, his shoulders hunching to lean down to press his mouth to the side of Bucky’s head. It doesn’t last long before he pulls away, and Clint’s stubble scratches the side of his face, but Bucky relishes in it. The first real, loving touch he’s felt in… who knows how long.

Clint seems to force himself to turn away, back to where he had been before Bucky woke up. “I’m waiting for a signal from Kate or America, that’ll decide the route we take. Steve—”

“Steve,” Bucky sighs, but Clint continues without pause.

“—and Nat will meet us somewhere out there,” he motions to what looks like some sort of courtyard, agents and vehicles rushing between buildings, foolishly ignoring the wall where they hide, “to provide backup and distraction. Then... through the woods, meetup with Stark. I’ll explain once we’re there.”

Bucky doesn’t bother responding, knowing he wouldn’t hear. Instead he focuses on something else, forces his thoughts away while Clint waits for the signal. Nat is a name he doesn’t recognize, but America must be referring to Miss America. And Stark, as in Tony? Tony Stark? Helping them? He can’t imagine he and Steve ever getting along long enough for them to come up with an escape plan, yet…

Something lights up the sky above the base. It takes Bucky a moment to realize that it’s a bright, glimmering star.

Clint doesn’t have to look twice, reaching back and finding one of Bucky’s hands before breaking off into a sprint, right into the courtyard where their enemies wait. It’s not long before they stop paying attention to the giant star in the sky and instead turn their focus to the man running through them with their prisoner. Clint’s no good with just one hand, Bucky realizes, wiggling his fingers until Clint gets the hint and lets go, knocking an arrow and letting it fly, a small explosion lighting up trucks not too far away. Bucky grabs a gun from someone as they pass, remembering how to use it without a second thought as he shoots a man between the eyes. There is no satisfaction as he pulls the trigger.

They stop abruptly at a tall fence, their backs up against it as more men flood out from the east building.

“Hydra,” Clint says, loudly so both of them can hear it.

“That makes sense,” Bucky mutters, mostly to himself. He’d be dead by now, if he had been actually arrested. Or worse, rotting away in the raft. Clint, despite the impending doom in front of them, wears a stoic expression.

This, Bucky knows, is better than both Hydra and the American government combined. They gave a valiant effort.

“Anytime now, please.” Clint’s eyes are turned up towards the prison watch towers, looking at something Bucky can’t focus on.

Bucky opens his mouth to say something, but before he can stumble through some sort of apology that Clint won’t even hear, a heavy clang ceases most of the action in front of them. He drops his gun as he automatically raises his metal arm to catch the shield as it rikoshet’s off of the side of the closest Hydra agent’s head.

“For once I’m glad to see you throwing this.” Bucky doesn’t need to look to know Steve has landed beside them. Clint continues shooting, either ignoring Steve’s new presence or not noticing him. They fall into each other’s arms, Steve letting out a quiet “Buck.”

The stupid Captain America uniform feels like it always does, smelling like sweat and blood and smoke, feeling rough on Bucky’s face. Yet it feels soft, compared to everything else he’s felt in… however long he’s been here. Feels like how it did in the 60s during the war, how it felt when they fought on a highway, then a helicarrier, and then in a glorified boxing ring. Bucky breathes it in, relishes in the familiarness.

“Hate to interrupt boys, but you need to get moving.”

Bucky looks up at the voice behind Steve. The Black Widow is shooting at agents and the tires of cars, a gun in each hand, sparing quick glances over at them between fires.

“Nat,” Bucky realizes.

“Natasha, actually,” she muses, all too casual for the situation. Steve looks at her, pulling away but still holding Bucky steady. Natasha doesn’t look at them, even though she has the opportunity to as she reloads one of her guns. It seems intentional. “Clint, take Bucky out of here and get to the rendezvous point, we’ll meet you there.”

“He can’t hear you,” he says, wincing as Steve reaches around him to cover them with the shield. The agents or whoever they are are getting closer, and there’s only four of them, Bucky weakened and Clint without his ears. Whey they haven’t just tossed a grenade at them is anyone’s guess. “He seemed to think that this was the best route, that America had somehow—”

The fence rattles behind them. Bucky is the only one who turns and looks, startled by the glowing hands and eyes that await him. America’s face is lit up with the glow from her hands and her jacket, red lips quirked up in a smile. “Hey, soldier.”

Beside America, Kate is knocking an arrow and shooting it between the holes in the fence. One of the watchtowers explodes.

“Took you long enough,” Steve grits out. The explosion forces Clint to turn his head and look at everyone who has joined them, though he doesn’t seem surprised.

“We got a little caught up,” calls Kate. There is an ugly gash across her nose, another next to her lip. One of the metal loops in the fence breaks under America’s glowing pull, others following suit. She successfully pulls apart the fence and creates a chink large enough for them to fit through, stepping back as the light fades from her person.

“Vamos,” America hisses. Natasha is the first one in, followed by Bucky, who grabs the back of Clint’s shirt, Steve bringing up the rear, covering their six. Once past the fence they start running, apparently knowing which routes to take. There are others, following them, but Natasha and Clint tag team in taking them down, running as they shoot. The woods are thick and dark, the only light coming from the moon poking through the treetops and America’s glowing fists as she occasionally sends a blast behind them.

Bucky stumbles. Steve is quick to catch him by the shoulders, forcing him to keep moving.

There comes a point when the shooting stops, all of the lackeys dead or giving up, and the trees start to thin until they come to a clearing, slowing to a walk. A quinjet sits there, turned off and non threatening. Natasha and Steve get to it first, Clint slowing to match Bucky’s staggering pace, wrapping an arm around his waist. His expression is stony as he gets a long, good look at Bucky’s face, possibly his first since… before.

It’s enough to stop Clint in his tracks, pressing a dirty hand to the side of Bucky’s face. It feels like earlier, he thinks. But the danger has passed. At least for a little while.

Clint’s eyes are soft as he looks at Bucky. “I had…” he trails off, stuttering, mouth moving uselessly. The hand holding Bucky’s side tightens, speaking the words that Clint cannot. Bucky lets his own hands slip up to the back of Clint’s head, pulling him down and pressing their mouths together at long last.

“It’s okay,” Bucky breathes into Clint’s mouth when they separate. “I love you.”

It feels good to say it aloud, even if Bucky isn’t totally sure Clint can hear it. He repeats the words, over and over, liking the way they feel in his mouth. Like a breath of fresh air, or a weight lifted off his shoulders that had never really been a weight in the first place. A comfortable presence, a source of light in the growing darkness.

He must know, or sense it somehow. Clint is laughing, despite the situation, pulling Bucky flush against his chest into a hug. He doesn’t say anything, just presses his cold nose to the side of Bucky’s head.

It’s enough.

“Come on, kids! We’re running on borrowed time,” Tony calls from the open door to the quinjet.

They kiss once more before Bucky grab’s Clint’s bicep and hurries them into the back of the quinjet. The others are all strapped in along the walls already, Natasha and Steve on one side, Kate and America on the other. Most surprising, Lucky sits in the copilot seat beside Tony, his head tipped back and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Clint lets go of Bucky when he steps forward, sitting down beside Kate and digging around the bag at his feet.

Lucky pants happily when Bucky rubs behind his ear. “I missed you too, buddy.”

Tony taps some buttons on his dashboard. “We got a three hour ride ahead of us, my robo-friend. You may want to get caught up.”

He’s right, Bucky hates to admit, returning to the cockpit and placing himself delicately next to Clint. His whole body aches, even the shitty seating in the quinjet feels comfortable. The jets rumble beneath them as Bucky buckles his seatbelt.

“So,” Clint starts, his head tipped to the side as he inserts a different pair of hearing aids, these ones a normal tan color. One stands out amongst the blood behind his ear. “It’s been about five days, give or take.”

“It’s felt like way more,” he confesses, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. Bucky was barely functioning for most of it.

“What did they do to you?” Kate asks.

Bucky sucks in a shaky breath. “They activated me, struggled to figure out how to turn me off… No one seemed to really know how to properly handle me.”

Steve leans forward a bit, the straps of the seatbelt constricting against his chest. “They were supposed to be moving you soon, probably to someone with more expertise. We took down most of, if not all, of the agents who knew how you worked way back when.”

“Why now?”

“We don’t know what changed, but we discovered that Hydra has been hiding in our government, poisoning it, starting the accords as a way to get to you.”

“To me?”

Natasha nods grimly. She crosses her arms and looks downward, continuing, “they must’ve wanted you to take out other enhanced. A means to an end.”

“So now what?”

“The good news is that we can use this to put an end to the accords, at least within the next few years. I have some of the Hydra files.” Tony waves a hand high enough that Bucky can see it from where they sit. “Explaining the secret underground mutant fight club might be a bit harder to work around.”

Something nudges his thigh. Bucky looks over at Clint, whose gaze is unreadable. “Tony’s taking you and I to my brother’s house. Remember? The one we talked about?”

Bucky does remember. The place where the past doesn’t matter.

His gaze falls on Steve, who nods encouragingly. “You and Clint go to Ireland, live without worry. America, Kate, and Tony are going to work on bringing down the accords with Fury, back in New York.”

“What about you?” Bucky likes to think that his voice doesn’t waver as he says it.

“Nat and I have plans… elsewhere.”

There’s something Steve isn’t saying, but he also isn’t one to lie. Bucky trusts him.

They’re finally going to get their later, Bucky realizes, looking back over at Clint. His chest tightens at the sight of him, bloodied and bruised but smiling. There is no part of Bucky that doesn’t want to go with him, to wake up next to him every morning and waste their days together, with nothing to worry about except for a broken lightbulb, or when they need to get groceries next.

Bucky looks back at Steve, worriedly.

“I’ll be okay, Buck. It’s not the sixties, I can fend for myself these days.”

“And if you don’t think he can, rest easy knowing that I’ll keep him out of trouble,” Natasha adds, her sly smile somehow reassuring the unease settling in Bucky’s heart.

The hand on Bucky’s thigh shifts until it finds purchase in his own, their fingers intertwining. Clint looks at him like he’s worth it.

Maybe he is.

“Alright,” he starts, Clint’s mouth on his before he can even really begin.

The quinjet lands in what looks like a field, rolling hills surrounded by thick forests. A house sits in the middle of the peaceful land, an old barn sitting behind it. The place looks old and well-lived in, miscellaneous objects lying around on the porch and outside the barn. Bucky stands on the edge of the ramp, watching as the sun begins to creep over the trees. It’s earlier in Ireland than it is in Connecticut, and colder, yet not enough so for it to feel too bad yet.

Steve steps up from behind, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder affectionately. “You know, if someone told me sixty years ago that Bucky Barnes is settling down, I would’ve called them crazy.”

Bucky laughs lightly. “You and me both pal. And hey, you’ve got a lady of your own.”

“Miracle of miracles.”

They slot together once more, Steve’s arms wrapping around Bucky’s shoulders, his metal hand pressing at the small of Steve’s back. The hug lingers, not rushed as it had been when he first arrived in the courtyard of the Hydra prison, but they eventually pull away. “You take care of him,” says Steve. “I’ve been around him enough these past few days to know he needs you.”

Bucky steps off the ramp and onto the grass. He takes a moment to breathe in the fresh air, focusing on the feeling of the light breeze that pushes strands of his hair into his eyes. For nearly the first time in his life as Bucky Barnes, there are no towering buildings or honking cars to disturb the peace.

Kate and Clint talk a few feet away, near the wood fence and waist high grass, using a mixture of their voices and sign language, Lucky going back and forth between running around the two of them and trying to get into the house. Bucky feels a sudden sense of fondness. “I need him, too.”

Understanding, Steve nods. “I’ll write,” he promises.

Bucky takes a step, turning and walking backwards as he speaks to Steve. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

The smile on Steve’s face is golden. “How can I?” His voice is high and there is laughter bubbling beneath the surface. “You’re taking all the stupid with you!”

Conversation between Kate and Clint stops once Bucky reaches them. It doesn’t appear to be his fault, just the air of time running out. She stands on her toes, hands on either side of Clint’s head, pressing her lips to his forehead. “Your happy ending, Hawkeye.”

Clint’s hands hold onto her wrists as she settles back onto flat footing. “Now go get yours, Hawkeye.”

She smiles, up at Clint then over at Bucky. “Thank you,” Kate says earnestly. Bucky can’t tell which one of them she is referring to. “For everything.”

Lucky rushes over, licking her face when she crouches down to wrap her arms around his scruffy neck. “Good boy, good boy,” she mutters into his collar. Bucky only just catches it, meaning Clint probably didn’t.

With a final smile and a wave, she moves back up the hill, towards the quinjet where the others stand at the base of the ramp, watching. Bucky picks up the duffel bag from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder and averting his gaze. Clint takes his hand, tugging him along to follow Lucky to the porch.

“Are you worried?” Bucky asks. Clint glances over his shoulder at him, shrugging.

“No. Not anymore.”

They reach the porch and walk up the few steps, old wood creaking beneath them. Lucky waits patiently by the door.

Clint looks up and around the porch, at the peeling siding and broken light that hangs over them. Bucky looks behind him, at the quinjet as the jets start up. He feels inclined to wave, even if there are no windows they could see them from.

“Are you?”

He tears his eyes away from the quinjet as it takes off. Clint squeezes Bucky’s hand, his gaze careful and calculating.

“What?”

“Worried. Are you worried?”

When Bucky looks back over at where the quinjet was, where they had been standing less than two minutes ago, there is nothing there to show for it. Your past wouldn’t matter.

“No,” Bucky says, and means it.

That reassures Clint, settles and straightens his shoulders. “Good. Cause that was your last chance to run for the hills. Now you have to look at this ugly mug everyday.” He gives Bucky a goofy grin, showing off his slightly crooked teeth, bruised face, and heavy stubble. Despite that, Bucky knows that he is beautiful.

“Ah, it’s not so bad.”

Clint crouches, letting go of Bucky’s hand and pulling up one of the floorboards, finding a ring of keys. “Yeah, well, I love you too.” His tone is joking but his smile tells Bucky it reigns true. He straightens, pulling out a particular key and putting it into the lock, twisting and pushing as the door creaks open. Lucky doesn’t hesitate to slip inside and explore, Clint following soon after.

The entryway is visible, stairs leading up to the second level, open doors on either wall, one leading to a living room and kitchen, the other to a bedroom. A rug on the floor, picture frames containing photos that Bucky can’t make out from where he stands. A homey, warm and welcoming place. Bucky hasn’t been in one of those since before the war, not counting Clint’s apartment, which had a sense of a self made home, Clint and Kate adapting to the city life and crafting a place for themselves. This house was built to be a home, a real one, with a wife and kids and a dog.

Well, they have one of those things.

Clint reappears from the door to the right. “You coming?”

Pulling himself out of the fog, Bucky nods fervently. He takes a long stride forward, crossing the threshold, out of the cold and into their home, where Clint is waiting for him.

.Epilogue.

“We are not special.

We are not crap or trash, either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens just happens.

And God says, “No, that’s not right.”

Yeah, well. Whatever.

You can’t teach God anything.”

—Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Bucky wakes slowly and languidly, letting his eyes adjust to the sunlight drifting through the crack in the curtains and to the hand that is wrapped around his neck.

It’s non-threatening, of course, Clint’s left arm tossed over Bucky’s chest and his hand caressing his neck lightly, thumb resting right underneath his jaw. Their legs are pressed together and Lucky is peacefully asleep on Clint’s side, unaware of Bucky slowly pulling himself out of bed.

Clint’s hand falls limply onto the bed once Bucky retreats. He places a long kiss to the side of Clint’s head, into his blonde hair near a scar that is just beginning to heal, then leaves the bedroom, beginning his usual morning routine. Shrug on clothes, head downstairs, add a few layers as the mornings grow colder, resist the instinct to wear a glove.

The sun is just beginning to rise and the cold morning air is leaving a dewey fog over the grass.

Lucky follows him out of the house, trailing behind while Bucky circles it a few times and checks for any signs of bugging or intrusion, in bushes and in the miscellaneous objects on the porch, his tail wagging all the same. He does his own business as Bucky counts all the things in the barn, firewood and targets and tools and other various machinery, returning when Bucky moves to go inside when he finds nothing amiss.

Inside, Bucky checks the windows, cabinets, smoke alarms, chairs, and pretty much everything else he can think of, satisfied when nothing unusual turns up. He digs around in the fridge, taking a moment to look at all the things they have hanging on it. A newspaper clipping with the headline ACCORDS THE RESULT OF NAZI INFULTRATION? VICE PRESIDENT PLEADS GUILTY! next to a postcard with Wish You Were Here! written over the New York skyline. It is signed xoxo Kate as she had once done with all of the sticky notes in Clint’s apartment (the ones that currently hang around the mirror in their bathroom), but is now accompanied by the neat signature of America Chavez. Steve and Nat write letters, but don’t disclose their location, though Bucky suspects they move around a lot, wary of the lasting effects of Hydra and the accords. Every once in a while Tony Stark calls the landline that’s connected to the wall and asks if their “tv” needs to be repaired or tuned up. Bucky always tells him no, he can do it himself, thank you.

Clint says that Tony is probably lonely, with the Initiative shut down. Bucky is inclined to agree.

A letter from Barney also hangs proudly on the fridge. A new one, written just a few weeks ago, the old one in a drawer somewhere where it will inevitably be forgotten. He details faking his death and running away from the tracksuit Draculas, living here with a woman named Simone and her kids, but moving recently after the boys grew up. He figured it was time to reconnect with his brother— but had not been anticipating a boyfriend instead of Kate. Either way, Barney signed the letter with a promise to write again.

Bucky’s not sure if he trusts Barney to follow up on that promise, but the house is nice and has felt more like home than the apartment he had in New York ever did.

He compensates Lucky by feeding him some leftover meatloaf and rubbing his belly affectionately, then leads them back upstairs where Clint still sleeps. He’s on his side now, his back to Bucky’s side of the bed and the window. The clock on the bedside table tells Bucky that he’s been gone for an hour and twenty eight minutes.

The routine gets shorter every day.

Carefully and quietly Bucky removes all of his layers, back down to his t-shirt and boxers again. Lucky hops up while Bucky slips back into the pleasantly warm bed, pressing his front to Clint’s back, cold nose at the nape of his neck.

“Jesus,” Clint breathes as he shudders, keeping his eyes closed but shifting so Bucky can fully wrap himself around him. “How’s the perimeter?” His voice is teasing, but mostly clouded with sleep.

“The same.” He presses his mouth close to Clint’s ear so he can hear him without the hearing aids. “Cold,” Bucky adds, his arm moving over Clint’s waist and finding his hands, the left arm moving up and under their pillows. “Autumn is almost here.”

Clint huffs, moving his head back slightly so it connects briefly with Bucky’s, then turns to look at him, their faces close. “We’ll be okay.”

#shut up mary #marvel #clint barton #bucky barnes #hawkeye #the winter soldier #winterhawk #kate bishop #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #america chavez

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