Hello everyone! So I have gathered that I am not alone in being so far from over Cap 2... I'm glad to have the company, at least.

Bucky's situation is a rough one. I've read a lot of awesome fic that's pretty grim, and probably pretty realistic.

However, I am and always will be an optimist. While this isn't going to be easy, it's going to be hopeful. I believe in these guys, and I want to see them happy at some point (preferably sooner rather than later).

I welcome feedback of any kind and hope you enjoy!

Project: Winter Soldier

Asset Status: Active

Current Mission(s): Eliminate Captain America; Maintain Helicarriers

Mission Status: In progress

Asset Capacity: 44%

Time Since Last Cryostasis: 4 Days

Next Mission Report: Pierce, Alexander; 2.6 hours

Rogers falls.

Down, down, down, through the open air beneath the helicarrier.

He watches.

Flying shrapnel stings his face and ragged breaths sting his chest; he watches. Frozen in place. The Mission is complete. Will be complete. Can be complete? If he remains still, he will be finished. It will be the end-

I'm with you till the end of the line.

Those words. He hears an echo of them in his own voice. Tendrils, incomprehensible, wispy, creep forward through his mind, taunting him, hurting him. He never said them. Did he?

Rogers hits the water.

He sinks.

He does not come back up.

The Soldier's flesh fingers tremble. His metal fingers dig into the torn aircraft hard enough to leave grooves. Stop. Stay. Stay, do not move, do not think. Complete the Mission.

Heart pounding, he feels the Mission under his hands. Tense, but not struggling. Refusing to fight back. Bleeding through his uniform. The blue, blue eyes filled with something the Soldier could not read.

He knew him.

He knows him.

Far below, the water settles still again, and Rogers is no more.

The Soldier jumps.

Falls.

Immediately his head begins to pound, pain screaming through his skull. The rushing wind turns cold and sharp. A flash of snowy mountains surrounds him, bringing pain, then it is gone. He hits the water hard, but he is ready.

The depths are murky, chilly, filling with debris. The Soldier propels himself downward toward the sinking, still form of his Mission. Blood hangs in the water around him like a cloud, his skin going pale. He will die in only moments, left alone. It is what the Soldier's purpose demands. He has already failed to kill the Mission by his own two hands. Doing it now by inaction will suffice.

But instead, he takes hold of the limp hand and pulls.

Hunks of metal and singed framework plunge into the water around them. The Soldier yanks his Mission closer and steers him through it. His vision blurs grey around the edges, his flesh arm quickly going numb with pain. His teeth clench, tight, and he closes himself off from it. It is nothing worse than what he has suffered at Their hands, but it hurts. Broken, fractured; They will punish him for allowing it to happen, before repairing it. He can feel the loose bones inside his skin, rubbing against raw nerve endings.

He blocks it fully and swims. Kicking his legs as they leave a trail of blood behind.

When his head finally breaks the surface, he gasps for breath. Panting, lungs stinging, he moves toward the shore. He drags the Mission like a corpse-he looks like a corpse, limp like one, too. At last they are out of the river. The Soldier lets him fall. He's soaked, dripping and shivering with adrenaline. Everything in him shouts orders to kill and return to his handlers.

"No." The word in this context is foreign. He has no right to deny anything, to feel anything, to think anything. He flinches in anticipation of a strike. But he is alone, and it doesn't come.

Slowly, watching the Mission out of the corners of his eyes, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a digital flare.

He shoves his target's heavy, drenched arm over one of the bleeding gunshot wounds in a semblance of applying pressure. His chest squeezes and he allows himself one moment, just one, to search the Mission's face for anything familiar.

He finds no memory, but there is something there.

The sensation is hollow and haunting, without anything to judge it by. But still he knows, he knows that this is someone he once knew.

"Do svidaniya," he mutters, and sets off the flare, runs.

He knows that Hydra will detect it.

But SHIELD will find it first.

Steve hears the world before he feels it.

The rattling of an air conditioner. A light song in the background of humming machines, and a low steady beep. Footsteps echo in the distance, purposeful and quick. Deep breathing, barely audible, exhales in a steady rhythm beside him.

Slowly, he makes himself open his eyes.

The walls are clean and white. Everything smells sterile, not like much of anything. For a moment, his mind is blank and he doesn't know where he is-how he got here. It reminds him of when he woke up in the SHIELD facility, except that was fake, and this is real.

The pain is too tangible for it to be anything else.

"On your left," he hears, and glances over. His eyes hurt, moving them makes his head ache.

But he breaks into a smile.

"Sam."

"You look like crap, Cap," Sam says, even as every inch of him loosens with relief.

"Nice rhyming," Steve murmurs, "you take long to think that one up?"

"Well I did have some free time."

Steve opens and closes his hand experimentally. They have him on something strong, strong enough to beat his heightened metabolism. It's obvious in the tingling in his fingertips and the fact that he's able to breathe and move despite having four bullet holes punched through his torso. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good, man," Sam says, leaning back in his chair. "Only thing I broke was my wings, and those can be fixed."

"Stark could help," Steve says absently. He shifts against the pillow and winces as it tugs at something on his stomach. Stitches, maybe. "What about Natasha and Fury?"

"They're fine too." Sam's mouth twists. "You got the worst of it now, I think. What happened up there?"

"Well," Steve says, wry, "he didn't kill me."

Sam scowls. "He came pretty dang close."

Steve breathes out. Memories trickle in, and the weight of everything settles back onto his ribcage. He lets his head sink down and rubs the rough sheet between his fingers to anchor himself in the here and now.

"Yeah," he admits. "He did. But... He didn't go through with it." Empty air and the sickening pull of gravity flood his mind, but he shakes it off. "I fell from the helicarrier." His eyes turn toward Sam without moving his head. "Which one of you fished me out this time?"

Sam's eyebrows shoot up. "None of us did. We assumed you got yourself to the shore before you blacked out." A frown curls his mouth downward and he leans his elbows onto his knees. "You didn't?"

Confusion sweeps through Steve's chest. "No. I don't even remember hitting the water." A thought hits him like a shock and he almost bolts to sit up-but his aching muscles cut him off. "Bucky."

"What?" Sam shakes his head. "No way, man."

"It had to be him," Steve insists. "There was no one else there, and I know I didn't save myself." Something like hope bubbles up in his stomach. It's dangerous, but he doesn't want to push it away. "That means something, right?"

The air drops, and Sam sighs. Steve knows what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth. Sees it in the creasing of his forehead and the twitch in his fingers. "Look, I-"

Steve cuts him off, firm. "He's in there, Sam. I know he is. I have to find him."

He owes Bucky.

Owes him a debt that goes back over eighty years now. He owes him his life, his happiness, and most of all, he owes Bucky for letting him fall the first time.

Sam sighs and rubs a hand over his face. There isn't any pity in his eyes, and for that, Steve's grateful. "You're really serious about doing this."

"I won't let him down again," Steve says, quiet. "I can't."

"So you're going after him?"

Steve nods. "As soon as I can."

A crooked grin springs onto his new friend's face, and Sam reaches out to bump his bruised fist. "Then count me in."

The Soldier walks as far as he can force himself, and the city changes around him. Smaller and older now, the neon billboards are replaced by peeling signs. Overhead, the sun moves in the sky, slowly dipping lower, lower, lower, and painting the horizon orange and red.

When his designated report time arrives, he freezes.

The tightness (fear) rising in his chest compounds with his four broken ribs and he struggles to gasp for a breath. His metal hand clenches into a fist (his other hand is limp and numb at his side) and he puts his back against a hard alley wall.

He has never outright ignored or disobeyed an order. Not that he remembers, not until today, and now he has done it twice.

His consequence may be the white coats, to play with his mind and body and punish him that way. It may be the men in black, who take their pleasure in beating him into the ground.

Or perhaps, for this, it will be something worse.

A shudder runs up his spine and he fails to make himself stand. No one is present. From here, he can see both ends of the alley, and looping clotheslines between windows give him some protection from overhead surveillance.

He intends to remain still for only a moment (he is Hydra's asset, he does not get to decide when to rest) and take stock of himself.

But before he can do anything to stop it, his vision fades to grey and the world goes silent.

Whispering voices register with his subconscious and he is awake in an instant.

He is on his feet before his eyes are even open; his shoulder has swollen into something tender and stiff, something he will have to evaluate, but he holds up his metal arm and surveys the alley. Several sets of feet have just scuffed their way around the corner, already out of sight.

The Soldier takes inventory of his surroundings again, and nothing has changed.

Nothing save the presence of a small clear bag and a pile of crumpled bills and coins.

Hydra's warnings beat a staccato through his mind. Explosives can come in the smallest of packages, especially now. He edges away, eases a thin, rusted pole from behind a dumpster, and pokes at the clear bag.

Nothing happens.

He repeats the testing until he is satisfied.

His mouth tugs downward and he returns to the strange offering, crouching down. The coins placed atop the bills clink against his metal fingers, and the bills are thin and dull with use. Currencies of all types are stored in his mind. American bills are no exception, and he knows without trying that these total twenty dollars and forty-two cents.

Had they dropped it? There is no sign of them returning to search for anything lost.

For the moment, he drops it back onto the damp, cracked concrete and turns his attention to the bag.

The material is transparent and crinkles when he touches it. Within, there are three pyramid-shaped objects wrapped in silver foil. A piece of decorative metal twists around the top of the bag and a small, yellow tag sticks out at an angle.

Random Acts of Kindness: Pass it On!

The Soldier's eyes narrow. Kindness is not an English word he has a definition for, nor can he find a counterpart in any other language. It could be something sinister. Before the people can come back and delay him with trouble, he pockets the currency and rips the tag off of the package, flipping it over.

An address for Central Christian Church adorns the back, along with a smaller printed sentence that he does not find useful (a scripture).

Since he has awoken, his throat and mouth have become gritty and dry, his limbs growing heavier. It is nothing that he will allow as a hindrance. He must move on.

The tag finds its way into his pocket, too; for research, he decides, and spares one more glance at the bag on the ground before slipping away into the grey-black early morning.