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He lands, catlike, on the fire escape outside of Steve Rogers apartment.

It's winter in New York, many months after the day SHIELD fell and Hydra was dragged out of the shadows. From the sky fat flakes of snow are falling to add to the piles already on the ground. He's covered in them, white dusting his hat and clothing as he fights back a tremble in his fingers. The clothing he has is inadequate for current temperatures but the Sol -- James has known far worse.

The only thought that matters in his head is what he's going to say to Steve when he see's him and despite the fact he's right outside the apartment he still doesn't know. Sorry is a popular one, amidst the leftove vestiges of the Asset suggesting he needs to offer himself up for punishment after going AWOL. Another piece of him wants to make a smart comment, offset the sadness he's sure he'll see in the man's face on his return.

None of them fit, none of them feel right. He hates that not knowing. James wants to walk in and say the right thing, do the right thing the way that Bucky would have except the memories in his head aren't playing along. He supposes it doesn't matter though, Bucky Barnes would probably have never run from Steve in the first place, so he's on his own there.

The urge to run flits through him again the way it has the whole way here and he wrestles it down. He's been running long enough, time to turn himself in.

James takes a knife and moves to slide it into the lock on the window only to find that it's already open. Surprisingly his first thought is more anger that Steve left the window unlocked than anything else, it's sloppy security and is just asking for someone to break into his apartment.

Someone like you?

He grimaces as he slides the window up, trying to ignore his own hypocrisy with that thought. Coming in through the window is the safest option. It's better for Steve if no one else see's the Winter Soldier entering his apartment, he is still a wanted fugitive in more countries than this one.

Inside is warm and sets the shaking in his hands worse despite his efforts to still them. Bu -- James, James bites his lip as he crouches on the floor, then forces himself to stand up. He has no need to hide, no need at all.

tookthewheel

The war is over. It's been over for a couple days, at least in the European theatre. Bucky had read about it in the London newspapers, giant headlines splashed across the whole page. Victory in Europe!

He wishes he could feel as happy about it as everyone else but for him the war had ended weeks previous with a fall from a train in Austria down a chasm hundreds of feet deep. Even if that and the injuries he'd gotten as a result hadn't been enough to drive the fight out of him, the news of a plane gone down in the Arctic after they dragged his sorry ass back home had been.

Fucking idiot. Idiot. How could you.

Bucky knew this war would probably end up killing Steve but he'd always assumed, or maybe hoped, it would kill him too. The two of them would live or die together, that was the way it was supposed to be and if one of them had to die while the other lived on... it should have been Bucky. It was meant to be him, he was sure, except for the work of the little rat-weasel who was currently locked up in the SSR's top secret holding cells.

Some people had called it a miracle that he'd survived that fall, the loss of an arm and days lying sub-zero temperatures until the retrieval mission had found him. Retrieval being the word there as they'd come looking for a body to take home, not a still breathing man. Bucky called it shitty luck.

Just didn't seem right, the whole world out there celebrating while Steve was dead.

The first thing he'd wanted to do after being let out of the hospital was go find a bar and see if he couldn't get shitfaced drunk the way Steve couldn't, except that when he woke up that morning he'd found an envelope on his bedside table, left by one Agent Peggy Carter. Inside had been an address and a time with the instruction that he not be late. For a moment he'd considered ignoring it, then dismissed that as pathetic. Just because he's feeling sorry for himself doesn't give him licence to act like a jackass to the woman who'd meant so much to Steve and been a friend to him to boot.

So eight o'clock sharp Bucky arrives at a shelled out pub he vaguely recognises from way back, picks his way unsteadily through the rubble to get inside and looks around for the lady of the hour. "Agent Carter?"

He's not sure how official this is meant to be. The choice of locale reads as something shady, though if it is regarding some official business he's not sure how useful Peggy is expecting him to be, empty left sleeve and all.

tookthewheel

He was weeks in from the cold.

It should feel like an achievement. The months before were a haze of violence, like so much of what came before them. For Hydra, for himself... fighting tooth and nail for freedom and a stolen past until finally Steve was there, pulling him in, fetching him home. You don't have to fight alone anymore, Buck. and he'd closed his eyes and let himself be led, too tired and bloodied to refuse it anymore.

He knew, he remembered.

Sam Wilson's house was located in the suburbs of Washington DC. Located far away from the still ruins of the Triskellion and any other reminders of the captivity he'd escaped. A normal house on a normal street, with a green lawn and neighbours to either side. It was safe. He was safe. You're safe.

Safe didn't make it easier, didn't stop him from patrolling the floors every couple hours through the night when he couldn't sleep or looking for snipers in the reflections of mirrors and windows. Didn't stop him from sleeping on the floor more often than the bed.

What it did was mean he wasn't alone. There were others to keep an eye out for danger, others to talk to when the nightmares kept him at night. There was Steve and there was Sam, with three meals (and more if he wanted them) every day and hot water to wash in. It might have taken time but he was slowly getting used to those things.

Early on, when James was new in the house, Sam had given him a notebook. It was for him to write down his thoughts in, thoughts or memories, that is. Things he wanted to remember or talk about. By now he's filled it about halfway in stilted, stiff handwriting. Dates and locations, sometimes pieces of names as he tries to put his life together.

1956 is the latest number he scratches down in pencil, it feels like an ominous one. Any of them past 1945 are ominous.

tookthewheel

[By now Bucky knows his way to at least one blind spot almost blindfolded. Sam has taken him there enough times for conversations to Bucky's benefit, perhaps to their mutual benefit.

This is the first time he's followed Steve to it and he knows, instantly as soon as he recognises where they're going, that this must be for something important. Though he's following Bucky has long since left his habit of walking in Steve's wake, now they walk side by side like the friends they are, with a pace and a stride that feels as natural to Bucky as breathing to fall in line with. He knows this, from a hundred thousand times before. Steve leads, Bucky follows.

Sometimes he watches Steve and see's someone smaller, frailer but no less strong. It's a little dizzying but assuring that on some level he remembers them from the start, even he's not all there yet.]

tookthewheel

It was Natasha's idea, though she hadn't been the only one thinking it.

She was better at voicing these things than Bucky was, who still got words muddled and locked up in his throat from time to time, especially over a subject like this. Natasha was just better at this sort of thing. That thing being inviting Sam Wilson into their relationship, just for a night (or maybe more than one).

Natasha broached the subject on a good day, when he had his head in her lap and her fingers were woven into his hair. One of her terrible Asylum movies was playing on the television, a studio that Bucky had come to appreciate as well for how utterly ridiculous they were in everything they did. No one could resist laughing at a film titled Sharknado, no matter what their past history which was he figured Natasha liked them so much. It was a good time for her to start a conversation on a topic she knew could startle Bucky, even if she was confident in her ability to read him.

Confidence that was proven right when, after a lot of talking, Bucky had agreed. So long as Sam was amenable he wanted him in what they had as much as Natasha did. There was something about Sam they both responded to, maybe they both needed in their lives, a lightness against what they both carried inside themselves.

Which only left bringing up the idea to Sam himself. That Bucky left in Natasha's hands, knowing she understood why he couldn't make that initial leap, with the promise to be there to back her up and cook something extra special for dinner that night, with a bottle or three of her favourite drink to go with it (because even if Bucky couldn't get drunk didn't mean he didn't enjoy the taste of it).

Now here they were.

tookthewheel

Anything goes: shipping, pwp, alternate universes, self-indulgey nonsense etc.

PM any of my journals if you'd like a specific thread post setting up.

tookthewheel

... human disaster trainwreck, honestly.

tookthewheel

[The city is far behind him now.

For an undefined period of time he has wandered aimless, lost in name and identity, torment by fragments of memory. He has stayed alive through theft or begging, sometimes even the kindness of strangers to a bedraggled man obviously down and his luck and not all there. Sometimes there were fights, always over quickly and forcing him to flee the scene. Mostly he simply wandered, trying to survive and find some clue as to his identity.

He remembered fields of snow and ice, an endless expanse of water. He remembered going sledding, someone small and blonde by his side. He remembered water dancing through the air between his fingers.

Bits and pieces. Fragments. The Equalists, those people he did remember with certainty, were broken and disbanded by the Avatar now. He had no orders or purpose from them anymore, the structure of his life had vanished.

All that was left to him was to keep moving.

Eventually his feet carry him to a forest and he goes deeper and deeper, eating through the last of the food he'd stolen and scavenging what edible plants he knows of from among the trees. Before long he's completely lost, even more than he was before and there are... things... creatures. Something unknown and beyond strange.]

tookthewheel

[Months have passed since the Asset's leash was cut. Since he stumbled away, dazed and confused, from the ashes of Project Insight and the broken body of the man who called him friend.

In that time he discovered a name and a history for himself, one that had been stolen by those who he'd called master and the fallout had not been pretty, for anyone. The first emotion that had followed the confusion and sense of loss had been fierce and sudden anger, a feeling of rage that was directed at a single target. He'd wanted more answers than the museum could provide him, he wanted to know what they'd done to him and he wanted those who were responsible, the one's not already dead, to pay for it.

Since that day the former Asset, now going by James when he had to give a name to anyone, had dedicated himself to tracking down what pieces of HYDRA had escaped the Black Widow's revelation to the world. It's easier than he initially expected; there's more information buried inside his own mind than he can ever know and between intuition and the very skills HYDRA had given him he's been cleaning up their remains even faster than the governments of the world and the Avengers could.

Yet for every den of serpents he burns down there are always more, to the point it feels never ending. There are never the answers he craves, there are never the revelations, no feeling of triumph, no... nothing. Just echoes of memories he can't make clear.

By this point he's ready to take on any possible lead and so when he hears that Brock Rumlow has gone missing from the custody of the US government he quickly turns his attention to tracking the man down. He has no clear idea if Rumlow has the answers he wants but he knows he was of a high enough rank to run missions with the Winter Soldier on more than one occasion, as well as to be there on the day that was to be HYDRA's triumph.

With singular purpose he moves through the rain drenched city streets, a hunter in search of its prey.]