Chapter 16: Chapter 16
The Wyvern and Bucky spent two more nights in the safe house, trying to keep their heads above water in the flood of memories and confusion.
They were constantly on alert, but didn't actually find much to do during the day. They couldn't leave the safehouse, to avoid detection, so they watched the street below the window through the blinds, ate, tended to their wounds, and built covers and exit strategies using the laptop. They agreed on contingency plans and rendezvous points, if anything should happen to the safehouse or while they were fleeing the city. If the apartment was raided they had multiple plans for escape, splitting up, and meeting back up again. Soon that conversation turned to another kind of contingency.
"If they get me," Bucky began, a muscle in his stubbled jaw jumping, "if they make me obey… I want you to kill me."
They were sitting at the kitchen table again. The Wyvern had been working on the laptop, but at Bucky's request she closed it and levelled him with a hard look.
"No."
He frowned. "No?"
"No. Not unless I have to. Because I know you can be brought back." Her tone was matter of fact. "If they get me, I want you to take me out of action – knock me out, shoot me in the knees, I don't care. Given time, I'll come back. But… if I'm about to hurt someone…" she pressed her hands into her knees, thinking. "Do what you have to."
Bucky was silent as he thought about that. He didn't want to be a danger any more, but he couldn't deny the Wyvern's point. He couldn't see himself making the choice to kill her, if there was a chance to save her. He just hadn't thought she'd be so against the idea of him dying.
"Maybe it would be better," he murmured, looking down at the table. "If I… if I wasn't here."
"Why? You're not planning to keep killing, are you?" When he looked up, the Wyvern's eyes were blazing.
He sat upright. "No."
She nodded, as if that settled the matter. But then something occurred to her, and her face fell. "Do you think it would be better if I wasn't here?"
Bucky's brows lowered. "No." He thought about the way she'd looked at him outside the bank: as if the sight of him, alive, was a miracle. The third thing she'd said to him after getting her freedom was to offer to check that Steve was alive. Her tentative smile, lifting a face so unused to the action. I don't want to anymore. "No," he repeated. "It wouldn't."
She relaxed slightly in her chair, still eyeing him. "Then… the same goes for you."
With that agreed upon, the Wyvern continued building digital covers for them. She identified some HYDRA funds that they might be able to siphon, but they agreed not to do it yet, in case the theft alerted someone. They also kept an eye on the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, and the news. Their laptop didn't have the processing power to go trawling through all the data, so they had to watch the headlines. No one in the media had even mentioned the Winter Soldier or the Wyvern yet. The intelligence community might be a different story, but that was hard to monitor from their safe house.
But there was one piece of intelligence that was very obvious. At noon on the second day Bucky looked up from the computer, his eyes darting back and forth.
"What do you remember?" asked the Wyvern.
He shook his head. "The Director is dead." He turned the laptop around to show her the headline: WORLD SECURITY COUNCIL SECRETARY ALEXANDER PIERCE KILLED AT TRISKELION: REVEALED TO BE HYDRA LEADER. The headline was accompanied by a picture of the Director in a handsome grey suit.
The Wyvern's face closed off.
"Most of the World Security Council is dead too," Bucky continued. "And the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The article doesn't say if they were HYDRA."
The Wyvern stiffened. "The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't." At Bucky's questioning glance, she offered a grimace. "We killed him four days ago. This is his old safehouse."
Bucky closed his eyes, slumping in in his seat. "I don't remember. Not… not yet. Tell me?"
The Wyvern didn't really want to – it reminded her of giving mission reports to her handlers. But he needed it. "We were with a team going after him in his vehicle in the city. He got away. We tracked him to… to Captain America's house." Bucky's eyes snapped open. "I identified the target, and you shot him."
"I remember," Bucky said hoarsely. "Ca- Steve, he chased me. You got me off the roof."
The Wyvern waited, but he didn't speak again. They sat together at the dead man's kitchen table, contemplating what they'd done. The Director's face haunted the Wyvern's thoughts.
On the second night, the Wyvern took the first shift to sleep. She dreamed of her victims, recalling more and more faces. The Director hovered above her, and his voice was laced with lightning. But then her dream darkened, the details growing vivid: there was blue liquid, knives slicing her open, molten metal bubbling over her bones.
The Wyvern woke with a shuddering gasp, well before Bucky intended to wake her. He was in the room in an instant, but the flash of his metal arm sent a thrill of fear into her gut. She leapt at him, driving her knee into his sternum and whipping him across the face with an elbow. Bucky moved with the blows, rolling to the floor and away from her, and jumped up to fend off more attacks.
The Wyvern was moving again, but away from him. She leaped over his legs and ran into the bathroom, gasping through tears. She fell to her knees before the toilet and threw up again, her arms shaking and her hair getting in her way.
The Wyvern heaved and heaved, bringing up the protein bars and biscuits from earlier, until she was left with nothing but bile. The memory of her own screams filled her ears, and her skin was crawling.
She sobbed into the toilet bowl, a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor.
"Wyvern," came a low voice, and she summoned just enough strength to look over her shoulder. It was Bucky, crouched just inside the doorway of the bathroom. He was pressed against the wall, to give her space in the small room, and as she watched he placed a mug of water on the tile between them. There was a red welt rising on his face, but there was nothing but concern in his eyes.
His small, mundane act of providing water shocked the Wyvern back into herself. She leaned back from the toilet bowl, slumping against the sink.
"I'm sorry," she said in a hoarse voice, wiping her mouth.
He shook his head and pushed the mug toward her. She took it. The cold water was a shock to her system as she swilled it around her mouth and spat it into the toilet bowl. It didn't wash away the screaming or the echoes of pain, but it cleared her mind a little.
After a minute of silence, she spoke again. "Do you remember when they gave you that arm?"
He was quiet for a while, still crouched on the cold tile. "Not really. I think I… I think I hit my head, so it's all blurry. I remember some of the pain, but then I woke up and I had the arm. I remember getting experimented on, but I think that's from… before." He pieced together why she'd asked. "Do you remember getting your wings?"
She let out a tired half-laugh, more of a sigh. "It's not just the wings. They put this… blue liquid in me, which made me stronger. Then they cut me open and put metal in my body. Feel." She swivelled on the tile, gesturing to her back. She made sure to keep him in the corner of her eye.
Bucky approached slowly, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness. He put his flesh index finger on the nub at the top of her spine, and the Wyvern swallowed back memories of latex gloves on her skin. Frowning, Bucky replaced that finger with a metal one, and tapped. A metallic clink echoed in the bathroom.
"It's on my spine, ribs, hips, and legs." She turned back around, pulled off her left boot, and extended her heel spur. It snicked out through her sock, a glinting metal blade. Bucky, now sitting cross-legged in front of her, looked stunned. He'd seen her in action, plenty of times, but seeing her now, slumped on the bathroom floor, seemed to bring home what had been done to her.
She gritted her teeth. "Then they carved holes into my back and made me a machine." She twisted again, lifting the back of her shirt to show him her moorings. "I don't remember…" she frowned. "It must have taken years to do it all. But I remember… I was awake."
Bucky made a sound at that, a sharp exhale through his nose. She turned and saw that his face was pale, twisted in horror and empathy. He didn't avoid her eyes.
She continued: "I was awake for all of it. They told me not to scream."
Bucky looked at the Wyvern, a shivering woman with vomit in her hair and metal on her bones.
"That happened because of me," he murmured. The Wyvern took another sip of her water, watching him over the rim of the mug. "I remember… you were a kid, surrounded by HYDRA agents. I realised that they were 'gonna keep you alive, and I had a moment – just a moment, where I thought that was horrific. But then I left anyway." He bowed his head.
The Wyvern considered this. She knew what she'd have done, after years of HYDRA programming and wiping. After a long moment, she sighed.
"It didn't happen because of you." Her voice was small, but it made Bucky's head jerk up. "It happened because of them, and what they wanted." She suddenly recalled the Project Leader's calm, calculating face, and squeezed her eyes shut. "You were just there. You didn't want it. You didn't want anything."
"You don't have to do that." When she opened her eyes, she saw that his were fixed on her, glimmering with pain. "You don't have to excuse what I did. I still did it."
"So did I," she said with a sad smile. "I know what was in your mind when you came for me, because it's exactly what was in my mind on hundreds of missions. I have done… terrible things. So many horrible things, and I can't even remember them. But if you asked me to do those things again, without the chair and the words?" Tears started slipping down her face again. She noticed that Bucky had tears in his eyes as well. "I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't." Her hands were shaking, so she put down the mug of water. "I don't know what that means. I don't think it excuses what I've done. But I hope it means that there's a person in me, not just a weapon."
"There is," Bucky said, his voice firm. "You are a person."
"And so are you," she continued, her eyes hard now. She had no experience with this, trying to articulate her emotional status. She decided to just say what felt like the truth. "We're people, and that means that what we were before, it was different. It was still us, but different. We're different now, we're… changing. I don't want to kill you, and I don't… the things that happened to me, I don't blame you."
They sat in silence together, in the dark bathroom. After a while, the Wyvern spoke again.
"What's it like, to be a person? I was a child, and then a weapon. I'm… I don't have any orders, and I'm terrified. How do I be a person?"
Bucky's eyes were soft. "I barely remember. I think this – crying and vomiting and feeling shitty… it's a step in the right direction."
She smiled, startling herself. "It feels terrible."
He smiled back, got to his feet, and offered her his flesh hand. There was a bruise swelling on his cheekbone. "Making jokes is a start as well. Congratulations on being a person."
She took his flesh hand and braced her legs as he pulled her to her feet. She didn't let go of his hand straight away – it was a warm anchor, in the cold tile bathroom.
"Maybe…" she frowned. "Maybe that can be the mission, as well. Being people."
He lowered his head. "Alright. You're the mission."
She let go of his hand. "So are you."
Blue-grey eyes fixed on brown ones for a few seconds more. Then:
"I'm going to wash up," the Wyvern said. "I'll be out in a minute, then it's your turn to sleep."
The third day was much the same as the first – sidling around each other in the tiny apartment, peering out the window, monitoring news coverage of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall. The Black Widow's government hearing made international news, though she said nothing about HYDRA's assets.
They had chilli beans for lunch, and the Wyvern nearly fell out of her seat at the tingling sensation in her mouth. When she reassured Bucky that she hadn't sensed anything suspicious, and explained her reaction, he looked simultaneously sad and amused.
"It's chilli," he said. "It's meant to be spicy. You should try the fresh stuff, it'll be even better."
She poked at her canned beans, frowning. She realised that that was their first real plan for the future beyond their immediate intention to flee. She also realised that if canned food was surprising, the world outside their safehouse was going to be overwhelming. She'd only ever been programmed with operational knowledge. Everything else: food, emotions, being a person; it was irrelevant. Bucky, at least, had been a person before. Though…
"They froze you," she said that afternoon, looking up from the laptop. Bucky was by the window, one eye fixed on a crack in the blinds. At her words, he looked up.
"Yes. They didn't freeze you."
"You're the same, then. You haven't been growing, like I have."
"No."
"How old are you?"
Bucky frowned. "I… don't know. Older than you."
"But I might be older than you, now. Physically."
He shrugged. "Well, since neither of us can remember, it doesn't matter. Actually…" his eyes flickered back out the window, and the Wyvern tensed.
"What?"
"There's a… it's a…" he sighed and nodded at the window. "Come see."
Cautiously, the Wyvern got up from the table and padded toward Bucky. She knelt beside him and peered out the blinds. Cars and people travelled up and down the street below, but the Wyvern saw what had caught Bucky's eye: a metro bus at the traffic light. The entire side of the bus was taken up with an advertisement: red, white and blue stripes, and a dark blue silhouette of a man with bold letters running across it: CAPTAIN AMERICA – THE LIVING LEGEND AND SYMBOL OF COURAGE. Smaller print below the silhouette read: Now showing at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The Wyvern cocked an eyebrow. "You want to go?" Bucky had so far been prickly at any mention of Captain America.
"Yeah, I… I think I do. It's a start."
"Alright," the Wyvern said. "The museum, and then we'll leave."
He looked up at her. "You don't have to come."
She shrugged. "Do you not want me to come?"
"No, it's not that. Just… I know you don't know who you are, and that place might have answers for me, so…" he cocked his head, trying to read her.
"That's okay," she replied, her voice soft. "I don't even know if I want to remember. But you want to go to this place, and you're my mission, so I'm going too."
The corner of his mouth lifted. "Alright."
It was strange for the Wyvern, being able to speak whenever she wanted, instead of under orders. Speaking her thoughts was… difficult, but she found herself warming to it. She started to understand why her handlers loved to gab at each other all day.
Bucky was enjoying it as well, when he wasn't caught up in his own head. He was a little more talkative on the afternoon of the second day, even asking a few questions about her wings. She didn't remember how she knew the answers, but she did, so she explained the Adamantium skeleton, the complex wiring, the artificial neurons. He didn't appear to understand a lot of it once she really got going, but there was genuine interest in his eyes. They both enjoyed the absence of silence in the tiny apartment.
That night, while the Wyvern was on watch, she heard the bed springs creak. She looked up just in time to see Bucky stepping through the doorway, his blank gaze fixed on the front door. He didn't even look at her.
The Wyvern took in his stiff posture, his clenched metal fist, his sightless grey-blue eyes. Malfunction, she thought.
He was heading for the front door, so the Wyvern let him pass and then soundlessly got to her feet. She instinctively knew he was going to attack her if he noticed her in this state. She waited until he was almost at the door.
She drove her foot into the back of his knee, and dove backwards when his metal fist swung out in retaliation. His punch connected with the drywall with a crack, but he didn't pull his arm back. The Wyvern got to her feet, ready for action, and scrutinised Bucky's kneeling form. His chest was heaving under his plaid shirt, and his hair was falling into his flickering eyes.
Once she was sure he had snapped out of whatever reverie he was in, she squeezed around the table to get to the kitchen sink. She filled a mug with water, then carried it across the kitchen and placed it on the linoleum by Bucky's knee. She backed off, sitting on the floor a few feet away.
Once he'd got his breathing under control, Bucky pulled his fist out of the wall and sat on the floor, reaching for the mug. His eyes flickered up to hers.
"'M sorry," he whispered.
She shook her head. "Don't be. Where were you going?"
He took a long gulp from the mug. His forehead was sweating now, and he ran a hand over his stubble. "I… I think I was going to HYDRA. Reporting back." He clenched his jaw and avoided her gaze.
"I've thought about it," she admitted. He looked up at her. "I've never been on my own, all I can remember is HYDRA and the mission. But I told you I won't go back. I don't want to. Do you?"
He was already shaking his head, face hard.
"That's it, then." She stood up, pushing her sweater sleeves to her elbows. "You don't want to go back, so I won't let you. You're my mission."
He smiled at that, though he was still shaking. "Thanks. You're my mission too."
The Wyvern picked up her wings and set them on the kitchen table. She'd tended to them as best as she could, with no tools, and cleaned the grime of battle from them. "I don't want to sleep," she said, eyeing her wings. "It's almost dawn, we've done everything we can here. Let's go."
Bucky let out a long breath. "Yeah. Let's do it."
January 15th, 2014
Arlington National Cemetery, Washington D.C.
Sam was surprised, and more than a little flattered, when Steve's scary, one-eyed, not-really-dead ex-boss offered him a job hunting down HYDRA. But Sam could see Steve's mind working – the guy was up to something, and Sam wasn't about to let him run himself into the ground after he'd just gotten out of hospital.
"I'm more of a soldier than a spy," he told Fury.
Fury didn't look surprised. Sam didn't know if the guy ever looked surprised, but hey. "Alright then."
They shook hands over Fury's not-really grave. It was a nice day, sunshine filtering through the green tree canopies and warming the gravestones.
"Anybody asks for me, tell 'em they can find me right here." Fury nodded, then turned and walked away.
"You should be honoured, that's about as close as he gets to saying thank you." Romanoff strode up the line of graves, dressed in black leather with a file pressed against her hip. She hadn't phoned ahead to say she'd be here today, but Sam didn't think that was something that these people really did. Mind you, he'd just shaken a dead man's hand. He was one of these people now.
He hung back, giving Steve and Romanoff a little privacy. He still didn't know what their deal was, but the snatches of conversation he caught about a nurse named Sharon seemed to point toward their being friends.
Romanoff started to walk away, but then paused. "Be careful, Steve." She nodded at the file she'd given him. "You might not want to pull on that thread."
Sam started heading over, but Romanoff wasn't done. "But if you do… try looking into the Wyvern. Could be that she's another unwitting HYDRA operative, or a handler."
With one last nod, she turned on her heel and was gone. As Sam walked up to Steve's left shoulder, he wondered where she'd show up uninvited next. He peeked at the open file in Steve's hands, and saw the frozen face of the Winter Soldier. He glanced skyward, silently apologising to his mother for hitching his wagon to this crazy bastard dressed as an American icon.
"You're going after him," he said.
Steve didn't look up from the file. "You don't have to come with me."
"I know." He took a breath, steeling himself. "When do we start?"
They meandered through the graves on their way back to the car, while Steve read the file. It had about fifty pages, from what Sam could see, and was written entirely in Russian. He didn't think Steve knew how to read Russian.
Eventually Steve looked up, though he kept the file open to the picture of Barnes's face. "This file goes until the mid 'seventies," he said, and clenched his jaw.
Sam recognised the bitten-off pain in Steve's voice. He kept his mouth shut, knowing that Steve would speak again when he was ready.
He didn't expect what eventually came out: "They haven't found the Wyvern's body in the wreckage."
Sam blinked. "They're still looking, man, there's a lot of damage. I never saw her after she pinned me on the first Helicarrier, she could have been caught in the debris."
Steve looked up from the file, raising an eyebrow at him. "She pinned you?" Steve's eyes flicked over him. "And you're still with us?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "I know, I know, I'm a badass. She's strong as all get out, but she… I don't know, got distracted? I managed to clip her in the ribs and get the hell out of dodge. Got her blood all over my sleeve."
Steve straightened. "Do you still have the shirt?"
"Uh, yeah. When Natasha was watching you in the hospital I went back and got what was left of my gear from where I stashed it – thought maybe it was fixable." He shrugged. "Everything I was wearing that day is in a pile in my garage." He paused. "Why? You think…?"
"Yes," Steve said, his fingers tightening on the file. His eyes were focused. "If we've got her genetic material then…"
"Then what? I don't know if you noticed, but your workplace with all its fancy labs has a Helicarrier sticking out of it."
"I know a guy," Steve replied, and pulled out his phone.
"Hang on, you think you'll just be able to test my shirt and find this chick's last blood donation record? I don't think she's exactly the Samaritan kind. Or the having-records kind."
Steve scrolled through his contacts, still clutching the file in his other hand as they walked. "Tony's good with looking outside of the box," he muttered. "If the Wyvern left a scrap of genetic material anywhere else around the world, he'll find it. This file is dated, but the Wyvern was with Bucky three days ago. She might turn up dead in the wreckage in a week, but if there's no body so far, we don't know that she's dead. And if she isn't dead and she isn't still trying to kill us…"
"Then she's with Barnes," Sam finished, just as they arrived at the car and Steve hit call on one of his contacts. "Wait, Tony? Tony Stark?"
Steve ignored him, climbing into the passenger seat. Sam grumbled under his breath, but got into the driver's seat and started the car.
"Hey Tony, it's Steve." There was abruptly a lot of noise pouring from the receiver, which seemed to make Steve first embarrassed, then flustered, then frustrated. Sam could only assume that Stark was explaining that caller ID was a thing, and then yelling at him about the whole Helicarriers-in-the-Potomac thing. Sam stepped on the gas, heading for his house.
"Yes – yes – Tony, I need your help!" Steve eventually bit out. Then: "No, stay in New York, it's not that kind of help. Besides, I thought you destroyed all your suits."
After another long pause with an endless stream of chatter from the receiver, Steve said "I need you to test some blood for me. I want to know who it belongs to."
Another pause. Then:
"No, I… I know who he is." His voice was small. Sam glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but Steve caught him looking and made his face all stoic and strong. Sam rolled his eyes.
"Oh, you're… you're already on your way? Well I'll give you the sample in person then, I'll meet you… yes, yes, I'll meet you there. Thank you, Tony."
Steve hung up, and sighed. Sam got the sense that a person might need advance training before having a conversation with Tony Stark.
He smirked. "You know a guy, huh? Might have been useful having him around the past few days."
Steve had the grace to look sheepish. "I thought he retired from the combatant side of things. I didn't want to put him in danger."
Sam's smirk fell off his face. Sometimes it was impossible to laugh at Steve when he was being all earnest and noble. "Well, you probably saved his life taking out those Helicarriers. He's going to help you?"
"Yeah," Steve said, going back to the file in his lap. "He's going to help us."
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