brooklyn_boy | Open Log

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It's an unusual tactic. They both know he's been made, they both know he's aware of his mark but he's followed anyway — not with gun, knife, or even phone. There's nothing in his hands but a jacket, no sign of fear anywhere in his posture or on his face. There's no announcement, no order, no put your hands up or any of the other things he's been greeted with in previous encounters of the same sort.

There's just whistling. An old song he's never heard before, but for some reason after each note he knows the next. From his place above Steve's head, the soldier's mind searches absently through archives and files it keeps from missions past. They're spotty, bits and pieces have been wiped from him over the years and they come back in drifting waves as his mind heals itself between time in the chair.

The song is not from a mission.

You're getting off target, Soldat.

He drops down from the air conditioning unit eight or ten feet above, boots thudding softly on the pavement behind Steve and a knife unfurling from a holster at his belt, spun through his fingers like a familiar tool. Be quick, be quiet, and this may not be a failure after all. Cause a scene, flood the place with guards and he'll lose his window.

If he misses his target he will be corrected.

He will do everything in his power to avoid a correction.

He doesn't speak, just levels a dark and emotionless look at the man before him. Maskless, but with as stony and lacking in recognition his skin may as well be a mask in and of itself. He doesn't recognize you, not yet.

The soldier is good. Steve hears the boots hit and hadn't even thought to look up before that point. He hadn't thought he'd have enough time to climb up anywhere. Hide, maybe. But climb? Steve underestimated his target and that is the sort of mistake that he'll likely only be able to make once.

Bucky or no Bucky, this man has an accredited kill list long enough to strangle two more people. Steve has to remember that. No matter what, he has to remember that this is an assassin first. But then Steve turns and the wind is drained out of his lungs.

Bucky is alive, he'd been told. But that's not what he sees.

"Bucky..."

The word falls out of him the way 'No' should have. There is no recognition in those blue eyes. No easy smile that Steve could draw even now from memory. It's Bucky drained of everything that made him Bucky. Steve had read about what had been done to the Soldier and understood it was a possibility. Knowing and seeing, it seems, were two different beasts.

Steve's palms face forward. The world spins around the ghost's face before him. There's a knife and Steve sees it but doesn't register it more than a flash of silver. Just like the flash of a metal hand.

"Bucky. It's...It's me." He's back in Azzano and how is it that he's lived through this moment twice? "It's Steve..."

The flash of upright palms is a gesture of surrender. He's seen it before, he recognizes it as a victim's survival tactic. Occasionally it's genuine, a plea to be spared. Occasionally it's a trick, meant to lull an attacker until the victim can create an attack of opportunity themselves. He's been on the receiving end of it both ways, and each time ended the same: the victim dead, and him slipping away from the scene without a fingerprint or a trace left behind.

The words that come out aren't please, though. There is no spare me nor any equivalent; it's the second thing that doesn't track with his experience, the second thing that tugs at a thread in his mind unrelated to any mission he's attended or any training he's been put through.

Bucky, he says, and something visceral in his core lights up at the name. His brow knits automatically, maybe the first expression he's worn on his face other than pain or concentration in a decade. Confusion may be the first emotion he's experienced that he wasn't programmed to in twice as long. More than that, maybe.

I know this face.

This is a test. It must be. There are tests often, reinforcements of behavior meant to make sure he isn't slipping or losing his grasp. He ran away once back in the seventies, they got too complacent and he went too long without being reset. Bolted, they tracked him down, and now periodically he's given tests to pass or be corrected.

Burning fear, anger, the desire to lash out — all of it's directed at Steve.

"I don't know who that is," he snaps, and that's all the warning Steve gets before he's launching forward like a great cat, aiming for lethal knife points in Steve's abdomen.

Shit.

Steve thought for a second that he saw something on Bucky's face. Something that poked out from behind the mask and hinted a living soul behind it. He'd even managed to take a half step closer, bolstered by the lack of instant aggression. That put him a half a step closer into the knife's path and gave Steve even less time to divert out of its path.

The knife's path is true and Steve's shirt slashes with a burst of red behind it. He hisses at he sting but it's nothing. It will heal within minutes if he can get away. And that's the priority now: get away.

Steve jumps back, holding up his jacket like a shield to mask where his torso is.

"Please. I don't want to fight you."

They fought on the same side. Bucky and he. They were always on the same side. This was wrong in ways he couldn't begin to even appreciate.

"You know me. It's Steve!"

He dodges quick, but not quickly enough. There's a little shred in his shirt now, but it doesn't seem to be slowing him down. Unfortunate, but at least he isn't screaming. Yelling would draw bystanders, maybe police, maybe a security force. He needs to go faster, be better.

They will strap him down to the chair and strip him of his clothes, they will soak him to the bone with icy water. Do better, soldier. There is no room for failure in Hydra.

Please, I don't want to fight you, and yes, he's heard that before. Never in this tone, though, never in this context. Steve, he knows that name. You know me.

This is a test.

This is a test.

"I don't know you," he mutters, voice a little raspy from disuse, a desperate sort of conviction like he's trying to convince some onlooker — or perhaps himself. As though to reinforce the point, he drives forward again in a quick onslaught. Thrusts the knife at anything that seems vulnerable; stomach, shoulder, neck. If he can just land one surely this will be over. His window of opportunity on the target is narrow.

Do not fail us.

Steve's focus is the only thing keeping him in one piece. Bucky is trying to hurt him. Trying to kill him. He can't give into that reality without risking his life, the senator's, and Bucky's into the bargain.

The next attack has a force behind it that's more emotion than strategy. The coat is able to take the hit and Steve throws it at Bucky's face to obscure his vision long enough to retreat out of an easy strike zone. Steve doesn't want to fight but he will. If he's pushed to it, he will. But his back isn't against the wall yet.

"You do." Bucky's tone is more forceful than it likely would be if Steve's wrong. He's still betting his entire pot on a pair of sixes with bluffing as his only real option. Maybe, if he says and believes it hard enough, he can even make the bluff true.

"You know me. I'm Steven Grant Rogers. You are James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky, please. Look at me. You've known me your whole life."

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