The sit-down with Natasha is tense. She eyes Bucky across the metal table like she's not sure who she's looking at, the usual warning tone gone from her voice as she becomes wary at their proximity. Steve only has a little time to spend between here and Sam's rendezvous point, so they're trying to make this quick, but it's hard to be effective when Natasha is working for the other side.

"How's Tony?" Steve asks, and it's not small talk. He's trying to glean their position, how close Iron Man is to snapping, storming the metaphorical Bastille.

Natasha leans forward a bit, but she doesn't relax. Her brows are creased, perfectly carrying herself, playing off her emotions with a terse grimace. "Irrelevant," she tells Steve. Bucky doesn't feel like he should even be here. She goes on to say, "He wants your surrender."

"No," Steve replies, easy as breathing.

"It's hardly a choice, Rogers," she enthuses, leaning forward even closer. She's too close. Bucky feels his arm steeling against the table, denting a metal bar. "You're outnumbered and outgunned."

"I've never been anything but," Steve shoots back.

"But you had Tony," she interjects. "It's not worth it."

"Freedom is always worth it," he says, but he says it like he's saying something else entirely. His eyes soften. His posture changes. "You can't tell me that you want this. You can't tell me that you'll allow them to execute Bucky in cold blood. Especially with your background."

Bucky is once again reminded that he doesn't belong here as her face tightens, as she backs into the chair again, trying to surmise. Finally, she murmurs, too low and deadly for it not to be a threat, "You choose Bucky, that'll be the last straw."

"Like you said, Romanoff." He glares and begins to stand. "It's not a choice."

Bucky turns to look at Steve, horrified and angry. "Steve," he growls, grabbing his forearm, forcing him down into his seat. "You're not doing this."

"You say that like there's something else to do," Steve says steadily, eyes still angry, still on Natasha. Bucky wants to grab his face in his hands and make him understand.

Instead, Bucky appeals to Natasha, looking to her. "You'd requested us here for a truce," he bites, the familiar, choking anger rising in his throat like wine flooding over a glass. "You requested us here to talk. Not for a death sentence."

"It is a truce," she says. "If you hand yourselves over, we'll be lenient." And she sounds reptilian, devoid of any emotion. In his periphery, Bucky can see Steve shaking with effort to stay under control. It's usually something he's extraordinarily good at. Today, he's wrought, being pulled thin. All of his punches come harder, albeit less clinical. Bucky's doing his best to stay out of his way, although that may not be what Steve wants. But this? This is the last straw. For both of them.

Because first, it was the attempted capture in Vermont. And then it was New York, and then Pennsylvania, and when Steve laid down to sleep in a motel, paying for it with Bucky's fake ID, his breathing didn't slow until three hours later. Bucky stayed awake all night, thinking. For the briefest of moments, wanting. He wanted to wake Steve up. Tell him what he'd been holding in for fifty years, forgetting for fifty years, only to remember again. Blonde hair, bluer eyes. A soul that shone, a heart that was a physical representation of everything Bucky wasn't, and had never been. He's trying harder, now.

He looked to Steve when it was finally too early for him to be awake and thought: if there was ever a question between he and Steve, there would only be one answer.

Now, the choice is being presented, and like a law, Steve is strong and sure of himself. It infuriates Bucky and endears him, all in the same stroke. He hates Steve the way he hates his own weaknesses. They're indulgent, and kind. And easily exploited.

Bucky knows how dangerous the game is; he's played it. And he hasn't played it the way the Captain has. Steve hasn't ruined innocent people's lives, he hasn't completed covert operations where the goal was to cause chaos. He hasn't killed recently orphaned children that had the unfortunate luck to see his face. Bucky's dealt his hand and lost; doesn't Steve see that? Or is he so selfless that he's selfish? Is he saving Bucky for Bucky's sake, or for his?

Exploitation is an art that is drawn in blood and gunpowder. Bucky tries to fight the red that's clouding his eyes but he wasn't destroyed and rebuilt in someone else's image to inspire self control. He squeezes Steve's arm so hard that Steve actually has to stomp on his foot to get his attention.

"Bucky!" he shouts, and for a second, Bucky doesn't recognize his own name. He's the Winter Soldier. And Natasha, Captain America - targets. Objectives. He's standing up, staring Natasha down, metal hand curling into a fist. "Bucky," he hears again. A hand is on the small of his back; Steve's.

"Lenience?" he almost shouts. "What's lenience to you, Romanoff? Because my version of lenience used to be a quick bullet to the temple."

"Buck, back off," Steve warns.

"No, Romanoff. I'll turn myself in. No leniency for me" - Steve breaks in, "You're insane," but Bucky ignores him - "and you let Steve off. Completely."

Natasha pauses to think, although Steve is still protesting: "Bucky, are you insane? Are you damn insane?" like Bucky has never lost his mind before. Finally, she says, "Sure," and reaches in her pocket for an address, standing as she slides it across the table. "We'll find you."

"Like hell you won't," Steve hisses, standing up next to Bucky even as Bucky grabs the address in his hands and pockets it. Steve begins to walk around the table, like he has something to spell out to Natasha intimately. He nearly touches her shoulder as she's walking out, but her hand goes to his wrist and she's twisting Steve's arm - back, back. Bucky says nothing. He doesn't want to help Steve ruin his fucking life. Steve shouts in pain, and Natasha recovers their distance and lets go, standing in the doorway, expectant.

Steve is so quiet and firm with conviction as he speaks, Bucky nearly can't fathom the words he's saying. "You're not... taking... Bucky."

"It's his decision," she says, and for the first time, she looks slightly remorseful. Her eyes dart to Bucky, and her gaze melts. Bucky wants to leave for the third time that day. "I'm sorry, Steve."

"He feels guilty. He thinks he's not worth saving." And even though Bucky can hardly hear them, Steve's words catch fire and burn in his ears like they were screamed at a fever pitch. "You're taking advantage of him."

"I know." Natasha stills. "He's letting us."

"I don't do well with exploitation," Steve hisses, advancing. "I hate bullies. I fought 'em back then, and I'll fight 'em now."

"And he'll always back you," Natasha whispers, saddened. "But someday that isn't gonna be enough, Rogers. And that day's approaching." She steps forward, just a little, looking up at Steve, although Bucky has the feeling that she's the one who's intimidating. "Someday, you're gonna be outmanned, outgunned, and you're gonna have to make the choice. Both of you, or none of you."

"And you know me well enough," he spits, enraged, "to know what choice I'll make."

Bucky watches her as she nods and leaves their damp concrete hideaway, wooden door swinging uselessly behind her. He feels violated and but so real; so full of blinding emotion it's hard to divorce himself from the act of following Steve and flinging him into a side room, where one glaringly incongruent plant sits, waiting to die. Bucky speeds up the process. The vase goes flying across the room and hits the wall behind Steve's head, water exploding and sluicing down the stone. The pattern on the wall reminds Bucky vaguely of a head shot, brains splattered cruelly against a cold surface. The only thing that makes Bucky hesitate is Steve's look of resigned fear, like he's gotten used to Bucky's lashing out.

Bucky pushes through it, uses the fear to his advantage, because that's what he was taught. He walks too close to Steve and gets in his face and yells, like he forgets where he's standing, "You don't understand!"

"What don't I understand?" Steve snaps, pushing Bucky away but feeling surprised when he comes back harder. "That you have a death wish?"

"You don't fucking get it, Rogers," Bucky hisses, taking one of his hands and pinning it down, other hand clenching around the fabric of Steve's shirt. "You don't fucking get that I killed people - innocent people - for seventy fucking years!"

"That wasn't you-"

"Wasn't it? Because I can remember every fucking scream in my head, Steve," Bucky yells, but it's coming out more pained than anything else. "Moscow, '83. Husband comes home to his wife and she sees the sight so I shoot her first, so she doesn't scream," Bucky starts, voice becoming a menace. Steve looks away because he can't look, because Bucky isn't bleeding but he still looks like he's in agony. "Albania, '52. I shoot a little girl - she's about to become Queen because I killed her mother two hours earlier, and that's bad news for HYDRA. She was on the steps of her school, talking with her friends. Mexico City, '06 - there's twenty minutes until a man steps on a plane after two tours in Iraq, going home to see his wife and his three children, and I kill him by hanging him and making it look like he killed himself from PTSD. And winter of 2012, I torture and kill a man. Just because I want to."

Steve looks mortified - the way Bucky deserves to be looked at, but hasn't been. He hasn't told Steve about the co-ops and strikes on small villages, dead mothers holding dead children their arms - canvassed walls painted with blood. He hasn't told him about those because he knows he doesn't need to. Steve can see it now - oh, yes. The only scars Bucky's ever gotten were from slitting other people's throats.

"I lost every bit of me that mattered to you when I fell off that train," Bucky says, voice rising again, and even though he sounds and looks and displays like Bucky, the Bucky Steve knew died so long ago. "You have the fucking gall to sacrifice yourself for this thing your friend has become."

"My best friend," Steve breathes.

Bucky tightens his grip around Steve's shirt. He can feel him heaving with breath, energy, emotion. "My best friend. My Buck." He searches Bucky's eyes and keeps searching because he thinks there's something to find. "You fed me. You stole food from the mart when I was sick. You took care of me when Mom died. You got firewood that one winter in the twenties, real bad winter" - Steve's voice gives out - "and-"

Bucky shakes Steve, for good measure, his teeth gritting. "I'm not that person anymore," he says, bruisingly, voice breaking, "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"-if you wanna know who James Buchanan Barnes is, you look right into my eyes, because I know."

Bucky feels like a balloon that popped. All his air is gone, but there's still traces - traces. "You're not listening!" he yells. He feels so angry that Steve is holding onto this notion, this hope that is mostly founded in self-indulgence and naïvete. "You don't get it!" he continues, "I'm broken! I'm not worth it! I'm not your fucking charity case, Rogers - I've killed and tortured - and just because seventy years ago you loved a man who looked like me doesn't mean-"

Steve kisses him. He tastes like blood because his lip is splitting open again - but under the familiar tang there's the distinct taste of Steve that somehow Bucky knows like a song he hasn't listened to in years. Steve's hand is in his hair, and he's kissing back, because as much as he's not the man he was, he can't help but love the man this is. He's forgotten how to breathe and as much as he feels like he should know by now, it gets lost, along with the anger flooding him over. When he parts - and he has to, because he's about to pass out - he starts sobbing into Steve's chest.

"Hey," Steve murmurs, wrapping his arms around Bucky's shoulders. He's shaking, he's flying apart. He doesn't know which way is up but he knows where land is - Steve. "Buck. I'm always going to be here."

He's crying so loudly; the sounds are ripping through his throat, scratching his voice raw. He's trying to speak but he can't - it gets lost into Steve's chest, Steve's body. Maybe he can't imagine loving anyone other than him. Maybe that's why he wants to hate himself so much - because Steve doesn't deserve his pain, his rage. What he deserves is a life; a man who isn't so fucked up in every conceivable way that it's hard to tell what parts of him are real and what's just a fragmented memory.

He can't remember exactly when it was that he lost himself in Steve so completely, but he knows it predates a time when he knew how to lose himself at all. And maybe Steve can't imagine loving anyone other than him, either. Because he keeps on saying: "Buck. It's okay. It's okay, Bucky," and it sounds so much like: "I forgive you, I'm sorry, don't leave."

"Don't leave."

A/N: dedicated to @sherlockwithanafro aye ly babe