So I haven't updated this story since before my exams for school . . . yeah . . . that's, um, bad. And I'll get more into that at the end of this chapter, but for the record I'm sorry. I tried to keep my profile updated with the stories, so if I ever just don't update check my profile to see if I've changed the "progressiveness" description on the story.

At least I finally managed to dig this chapter out of my head! Plus, it's longer than a lot of my other ones to sort of make up for the longer wait (though it's a feeble effort).

Chapter 13

When Bucky woke up the next morning, he knew something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something off about how he felt. For a few moments, Bucky lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. His one thin sheet was on the floor next to the bed where he had kicked it off at some point during the night and sat there in a deformed heap.

Could it be that I am still not used to sleeping in a bed?

Bucky immediately dismissed the thought.

No. It's been too long for that.

Still, Bucky couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, even as he got up and showered. Automatically, he found himself changing into the familiar tight black clothing that had already been placed in his small closet.

Guess it's a habit.

In minutes Bucky was downstairs in the kitchen and examining his breakfast options. Eventually, he decided on a simple cereal with toast and strawberries. Clint came down as Bucky was eating, looking about as tired as physically possible without actually being asleep.

"'Morning," the exhausted archer mumbled as he searched for his own breakfast. Bucky didn't reply, but from Clint's uncaring reaction the soldier guessed that this was not uncommon.

Once Bucky had finished eating, he immediately went to the training room. His movements felt robotic, like he was there but not directing them.

What's wrong with me?

Bucky soon found that training was a pointless exercise; he was too tense and distracted to successfully fight against anything, much less a robot.

However, once Bucky remembered that Cap had been kidnapped, the robot backed away missing a head and suddenly containing a giant hole in its chest. As it fell, sparking, Bucky shook his left hand, feeling a slight gratitude towards Stark for improving it.

"Sir," Jarvis said, "Mr. Stark has called a meeting in the Avengers room. He asked that you come right away."

Less than two minutes later, Bucky was sliding into one of the chairs around the Avengers meeting table.

"Record time, Terminator," Tony commented, munching on a packet of what looked like blueberries. "Though we have to wait a minute for Thor to get back. He was going to see Jane or something like that."

Anxiously, Bucky tapped his foot on the ground while the other Avengers - minus Cap and Widow - trickled into the room. Out of all of them, Hawkeye was probably the worst for wear, somehow managing to look even more tired than he had during breakfast.

"Okay! Now that we're all here, we can get started." Tony took his feet off his table and abruptly became serious. "The trackers that Cap and Widow had stopped functioning almost immediately after they were taken yesterday. Therefore, tracking them was no easy task."

"Just tell us where they are," Hawkeye muttered. Tony shot him an annoyed look and then continued speaking.

"Thanks to the unique makeup of Cap's shield, however, I was able to search for certain frequencies that would allow me to track down the approximate location of the shield, within a two-mile radius."

"Interesting," Banner commented, leaning forward. "You didn't tell me about that part."

"A magician has his secrets," Tony replied breezily. "Now, since that wasn't good enough, I went out on a little exploration party last night and had Jarvis do more in-depth scans using my Iron Man suit." Tony hit a few buttons on the holographic table, and a three-dimensional projection of the city popped up. Rapidly, it zoomed in on one of the outer areas. "I managed to track our missing friends to this location." A red dot pulsed in an abandoned building. "This area was boarded up; its scheduled for demolition in a few months, since the damage from the alien invasion still hasn't been repaired."

"What is our plan of attack, Man of Iron?" Thor asked, leaning forward. The prince of thunder was serious; obviously, he wasn't a fan of anyone messing with his friends.

"Easy," Tony replied, a dark look crossing his features. "We're going to make those guys regret messing with the Avengers. We're not a group of people to be taken lightly."

Bucky crouched in a building a block over from where Captain America and Black Widow were apparently being held. Thor was in the clouds, using the cloudy and nearly stormy atmosphere as cover. Iron Man was doing the same, and Hawkeye was a few buildings over, on the roof of one of the taller structures that wasn't destroyed. Banner had elected to stay behind, once more saying that he would cause more harm than good and that someone had to stay behind to "man the fort".

According to Banner, the Hulk was still a force to be reckoned with. Despite having him under control during the invasion of New York, Banner insisted that he didn't want to risk losing control in a situation where things weren't absolutely desperate. Tony had commented on this, saying that a scenario as harrowing as Loki's attack on New York wasn't likely to happen again anytime soon.

Even now, the destruction from that invasion was evident. The buildings in the abandoned district were rarely more than piles of rubble arranged in the general way that a house or apartment complex would've been. It was nearly impossible to imagine people living there, and even harder to imagine how the buildings had looked before they were leveled during the fighting.

"All right, Avengers," Iron Man said through the earpieces that he had given everyone. "You all know the plan?"

There was a general chorus of "yes" and "sure", with Bucky giving a terse "yeah". He didn't trust himself to say any more than that.

"Well then," Iron Man continued, the grin audible in his voice. "Let's get this party started. Hawkeye, if you could ring the doorbell . . .?"

"Ding dong, idiots," Hawkeye muttered, drawing back his bow, a very special arrow nocked to the string. An instant later, he let it fly with perfect accuracy.

The door to the crumbling shop never stood a chance. In an impressive - but contained - explosion, the entire front side of the shop was blown off. Even as the smoke was clearing, Hawkeye was already moving to get a better angle. The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, was sprinting forwards, sliding into a convenient piece of rubble only a few yards from the clearing smoke in front of the building.

Admittedly, Bucky wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of blasting his way inside a building that Steve was most likely being held in. He knew his friend was more than durable, but still. It was a worrying thought, and one that refused to go away, despite Tony's continuous assurances that he had done a thorough sweep of the building beforehand, and that Captain America and Black Widow were being held in the lower levels. Because every villain needs a basement, Bucky had thought, in a rare moment of sarcastic pessimism. Usually, he was too preoccupied to let his thoughts go in any direction but his objective.

"Thor, would you please give them our greeting?"

"Aye," Thor grunted in response to Iron Man's request. The dark clouds that had already gathered earlier in the day darkened slightly, the threat of rain growing exponentially. A minuscule flicker of blue was all the warning that the heavens gave before a mighty bolt of lightning crashed down onto the remains of the shop, completely obliterating the upper floor and anything else that had been unfortunate enough to get caught in the blast.

"Y'know," Hawkeye remarked in the ensuing silence as the Avengers converged on the shop like hungry wolves, "Thor's lighting is really effective." There was an unspoken message in his statement that no one seemed eager to elaborate on, especially Bucky, since he had no idea what Hawkeye was referring to. Even if he did, there was no reason for Bucky to dwell on anything that didn't pertain to rescuing Steve from whomever had been stupid enough to kidnap him in the first place.

The Winter Soldier carefully walked through the smoke, his senses on high alert as he carefully avoided stepping in any half-melted pieces of metal or any other material. He carried his knives in his hands, poised and ready for any kind of surprise attack.

It was lucky that he did.

A blue pulse suddenly exploded from the one remaining section of wall in front of Bucky. Acting on instinct, the Winter Soldier quickly put his knives up in a block, knowing that he wasn't fast enough to get himself out of the way before the pulse hit him.

The energy hit the Winter Soldier's knives with enough force to send the man skidding back a few yards, and then the energy that was pressing against his blades suddenly dispersed.

"Huh," Iron Man remarked, suddenly landing right next to the Winter Soldier. His expression was impossible to read from behind his mask, but his voice was thoughtful and calculating. "Using destabilized and largely depleted energy cores to fire short-term blasts of unstable energy at potential enemies with enough force to knock them out or severely injure them without killing them. Clever." Another pulse rocketed out of the rapidly clearing smoke, but Iron Man just raised a hand and shot it apart with a blast from his Repulsers. "But not as clever as me," Iron Man finished, firing off another shot. There was a small explosion, and whatever turret had been firing the pulses was destroyed.

Even with the first threat gone, Bucky still knew better than to let his guard down. However, he did take the time to check on his blades to see if the energy pulse had done any lasting damage. As far as the Winter Soldier could tell in the quick inspection, the weapons were perfectly undamaged, if a little blackened from the raw power that had been pushing against them. The damage, luckily, wasn't enough to be worrisome.

As the lingering smoke finally dissipated, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, and the Winter Soldier stood near - but not too close to - the massive hole in the floor that Thor's lightning bolt had created. The edges still smoked slightly, but not noticeably, and they were cool enough to touch.

"Subtle," Hawkeye commented dryly, but the edge to his tone and the way his eyes constantly scanned his surroundings gave away his true feelings. No matter how calm he seemed, he was tense on the inside.

Bucky could sympathize, on some basic level, with that; hiding his emotions had become second nature. Hell, he couldn't' remember the last time he'd really laughed.

Hurriedly, Bucky dragged himself away from those thoughts. I can't think of that now, he reminded himself. Not when Steve is in danger. If I get distracted and something happens to him I won't forgive myself.

In the back of his mind, Bucky wondered if this was how Steve had felt about him before Bucky had "died" from the fall on the train, but he pushed that thought away too.

"There's about fifty guys on the first level," Iron Man said calmly. "Then there's another ten - probably the leaders of this operation - on the floor below that."

There was a moment of silence while the Avengers absorbed that information. Fifty guys, compared to a thousand aliens, was laughable.

"I'll lead," The Winter Soldier announced. His voice wasn't loud, but the determination behind it carried his words clearly to those around him, even without the earpieces. For a moment, Iron Man was about to object, thinking that he or Thor should lead because of their increased durability, but upon seeing the Winter Soldier's face he decided against it.

"Go ahead, Tim," he said. The Winter Soldier gave his teammate a slightly confused stare as he jumped down, but not before checking to make sure that he wasn't going to be attacked immediately upon landing.

"'Tim'?" He repeated questioningly. He missed Hawkeye's warning glance, silently saying "don't ask".

"Tim," Iron Man repeated, landing heavily and denting the floor slightly. Clearly, his armor wasn't as light as he made it seem. "Y'know, short for Terminator?"

Had the Winter Soldier not been in the middle of a mission, he would've stopped to ask what a Terminator was; at the moment, however, he was busy, so he just gave Iron Man an annoyed glance and turned to face the corridor that he had landed in.

The hallways didn't look like new construction; the basement had been there before whatever criminals were there had arrived, but new additions could be seen in a few places.

"Camera," Hawkeye noted, immediately shooting out the offending piece of technology with an arrow designed to short-circuit the whole system. The menacing red light on the camera went out in an instant.

Good, Bucky thought, adjusting his grip on his knives. That means that no one can record this.

On cue, men burst through the doors that lined the corridor. They were all holding guns, and, after spotting the Avengers - and taking the special second to curse their luck - they immediately opened fire.

Without even blinking, Bucky brought up his knives to deflect the first few bullets - the metal was clearly strong enough for that - but then he dodged to one side. Even he wasn't sturdy enough to take a bullet without being hindered severely. The Winter Soldier nodded to Iron Man, who blasted away the first few attackers with a quick Repulser attack.

Following up on the enemies' shock from that quick counter, the Winter Soldier dove out from behind the cover he had taken.

The first man he encountered never knew what hit him. All he felt was a slight stinging in his chest, over his heart, and then everything went black.

Just hold on, Steve, Bucky thought determinately as he cut through waves of opponents, never wasting any movement as he fought. I'm coming.

A/N I am a terrible person. I left this story hanging for over a month (a month!) without even giving you all proper warning! All because of a measly case of writer's block that was (conveniently) shattered when I found a nice new album of Breaking Benjamin to listen to. So, this happened, and I'm really happy that it did because the guilt of leaving this hanging was really starting to get to me, especially since this is one of my more popular stories.

HOWEVER, this does not mean that I can update again any time soon. Hell, you guys might have to wait another month or more. It entirely depends.

And for those of you that may be frustrated because you can see that I'm updating an entirely different fanfic while leaving this one alone, you should know that the process for writing a story is completely unique for every story. No chapter is the equal of another. So, sorry.

To my reviewers:

Basically, you all are awesome. I can't tell you how much seeing your support motivated me to keep writing, even if it was only one sentence a day. You guilted me into getting this chapter out, which is pretty impressive. Nice job, but don't go trying the guilt thing again. It won't work, I promise.

Until the next time,

-RoR