Work Text:
He could hear the clicks and snaps as weapons were put into place and combat gear was adjusted. The communal kitchen had become the team’s impromptu war room as they reviewed their plan of attack over a fast and in-no-way-sufficient breakfast. Even his sadistic Soviet handlers had made sure he had adequate fuel before going on missions. Barton seemed to think coffee and half a muffin would see him through the task to come. Steve was little better with his mountain of toaster waffles.
Bucky sighed and focused on the television. Far be it for him to try to talk sense into them. Stark would just brush him off with a sarcastic comment and an insulting nickname. Although, after he took to Ice Bear so thoroughly, Stark had been rather cautious about throwing anything too outlandish or insulting his way.
“Betty Crocker,” the man called, “turn it down. Some of us have strategies to plan.”
“Ice Bear finds your strategy laughable,” he commented but turned the volume down on The Great British Baking Show.
“I will not take criticism from a man who sits around with a man-bun watching Brits politely bake all day. The day you get up off your ass and get shit done is the day you can tell me my plans are no good,” Stark informed him with a tone that implied his was the final word on the subject. It wasn’t, but Bucky made no reply.
“Stark,” Steve warned.
“So the dude doesn’t want to fight. He’s been doing it for seventy years. Think he earned a rest,” Sam said, always the voice of reason. Bucky had decided he liked Sam. He was good to Natalia, didn’t pull punches but never escalated an argument, and he made the best coffee of anyone in the Tower. No, Steve could have chosen a worse sidekick.
The brief, but heated, debate that followed was all too familiar. Stark thought it was high time Bucky started pulling his not inconsiderable weight and making amends for damages done – one specific damage in particular – by joining the team and fighting the good fight. Everyone else thought he had earned his peace. It was brought up before every mission while Bucky sat listening to their plans from the couch but saying nothing.
“Is it too much to want some justice?” Stark demanded in an overly dramatic cry. “Just one damn mission.”
“Ice Bear will pick up a gun only if there is no one else left,” Bucky said, his emotionless monotone somehow managing to convey how unlikely that was to ever happen.
“Well, I will hold you to that,” he said with a sniff and an eyebrow raised in challenge.
“It won’t come to that, Bucky,” Steve assured him. “And definitely not today.”
“You can’t make that promise, Steve,” Natalia said flatly. She scowled down at the blueprints on the kitchen table. “There are too many unknowns on this one. We still don’t know what’s behind these doors.” She set the salt and pepper shakers down to indicate which doors she meant.
Even from the couch, Bucky could see the complicated layout of the building they were raiding today. It was part of what made this such a poor plan. There were too few hiding spot, too much open space, blind corners, and rooms within rooms, making the entire building far too good a place for an ambush to take place. No, he didn’t like this plan, but no one listened to Ice Bear. Some might have paid Bucky’s two cents some consideration. Stark wouldn’t, and he had decided that he was the one running this show.
“When we take out the bad guys, we can see what’s behind Door Number One and Door Number Two,” the man said with ill-placed confidence. “Time to suit up and head out. Ice Bear, don’t get up.”
“Ice Bear wasn’t planning on it,” he said, turning the volume back up on his show.
He liked this show. It wasn’t the panicked and angry kind of thing that Tony liked in his baking programs. This was a friendly competition that reminded him of the unspoken rivalry his mother had kept up with the neighbors in their apartment building. Watching these people talk with their competitors brought back memories of his mother’s eyes flashing with vindication as she tasted the soggy crust of Mrs. Florescu’s apple pie or the dejected slump of her shoulder at the light, fluffy perfection of Mrs. Goldberg’s honey cake.
“Sarge.”
Bucky blinked, clearing the fog of memories. “Friday?”
“Sorry, Sarge. We have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” he glanced at the blueprints still weighed down by the salt and pepper shakers.
“The team is unresponsive, Sarge,” the synthetic voice informed him as one of Stark’s interactive holographs appeared in the air before him. It showed each team member’s name, heart rate, blood pressure, and status. All the hearts were still beating, though they were doing so very slowly. Clint’s blood pressure was low – a sure sign that he was bleeding – though not so low that he worried the man might bleed out. After a minute, the image shifted, showing Stark’s face inside his helmet; his mouth was cracked open and saliva was spilling from his lips as if he were unconscious, but his eyes were crazed, open wide and darting in every direction.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I put a keyboard on his heads-up display. Boss is typing,” Friday said and started to speak the words as they appeared on the projection. “’Ice Bear, get your lazy ass off my couch. We were ambushed. Hit by paralyzing agent. Can’t move. No one else. Man-bun to the rescue or I’m cutting you off.’”
“Where’s Vision?” he asked, desperately hoping someone else was available.
“He is radio-silent, Sarge,” the AI informed him apologetically.
With a groan, he hoisted himself off the couch. “Really didn’t want to do this.”
“Sorry, Sarge. I’ll record the rest of the show for you,” Friday promised.
“Thanks for assuming I’ll make it back in one piece.” He trudged over to give the blueprints a more thorough once over.
The AI practically scoffed. “I have reviewed footage of your combat missions and your extensive files, Sarge. You’re a one man army.”
“You’re thinking of Steve.”
“No, sir,” she insisted. “You come with your own tank and everything, Sarge.”
“This was a stupid plan,” he commented as he reviewed the layout. It looked even worse up close. The two doors leading off to God-knew-what were the lease of the buildings problems. Steve should have vetoed this the second the blueprints hit the table. Natalia knew better. Hell, even Sam was soldier enough to have seen this death trap for what it was. “Stark deserves an ass-kicking for thinking this up.”
“I cannot argue with you there. Boss is great at many things, but this is not one of them.”
“Friday, you and I need to talk more often,” Bucky said.
“You’re too busy playing Ice Bear, Sarge,” the woman said with an audible shrug.
“Probably not after today,” he commented.
“I think Ice Bear could pull this off.”
“You say so,” he muttered and then cursed. “Dammit, I don’t have any gear.”
“Check the ammo store. There’s a box with your name all over it.”
He did as the AI said, taking the elevator down four levels where he discovered that she had been speaking quite literally. There was a heavy, black cargo box with ‘Barnes’ written across it on every side. He didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“How long has this been here?”
“Since a few months after HYDRA fell,” Friday said. “Found in one of the bunkers Captain Rogers raided while looking for you.”
Bucky stared at the contents of the trunk. His flak vest and Kevlar pants. This favorite knives. The much-hated mask and goggles, an unfortunate necessity after first stepping out of cryo. And guns. So many guns. All the things a mindless killing machine needed to do as he was told. He hated it all and would have liked nothing more than to burn it, but, right now, people needed him to be the Asset again.
He left his tee-shirt and sweatpants on the floor and put on the clothes of the thing he had been for the worst part of his life. It felt familiar, almost comforting in a way that disturbed him. He shouldn’t like the feel of knives tucked into his boots and a gun on his back.
He moved to the elevator, adjusting the vest as he went. With a ding, the doors opened and a woman cried, “Damn, Ice Bear, you look hot!”
It wasn’t Friday, though he wouldn’t put it past Stark to make an AI that reacted in such a way. No, the exclamation had come from the much loved mother of his Goddaughter.
“Don’t let Steve hear you say that,” he chided.
“Steve can suck it!” Darcy cried as her eyes looked him over. “Seriously considering jumping your bones right now.”
“With a baby in your arms?”
“I can multi-task.”
He offered her a grin.
“One thing, though. Man-buns are only to be worn when cooking,” she insisted, reaching out and yanking the elastic from his hair. “Oh, so much better. If Steve dies, I’m going to come looking for comfort in your bed. Just an FYI.”
Friday’s humorless voice cut through the playful flirtation. “Sarge, Agent Barton’s blood pressure is dropping.”
Darcy groaned her reply. “Did Clint get shot again?”
“Ice Bear will not to let anyone bleed to death,” he said, voice taking on the dull monotone of his alter ego.
“Good luck.” She rose to her toes to kiss his cheek. “Don’t die.”
“Ice Bear makes no promises.”
Steve’s motorcycle was waiting for him in the garage. As he sped through the city toward the site he had taken to calling ‘Stark’s Folly’, he reviewed the plan the team had used, trying to determine precisely where in the building their bodies might be. It was no good. There were too many options. He couldn’t use Stark’s plan as a guide. He’d have to do it his way if he had any hope of surviving to find them and living to find out who won the Bake Off. His money was on Nadiya.
The bike was abandoned three blocks away behind a dumpster, much to the annoyance of the bum residing there. Bucky gave him a twenty to shut him up and leapt onto the fire escape ladder, climbing up to the roof as silently as the rickety metal allowed. From there, he took a running leap over the alley, tucking and rolling before springing back up to his feet and taking off at a run, leaping again and again across the chasms where one building ended and another began. Three blocks made for a lot of buildings in this part of New York, but it was better than trying to go unnoticed on street level when wearing a weapon on every part of his body. Besides, it had been months since he’d worked this hard. It was a good warm up for the fighting to come.
As he approached the target, he slowed. With two building between him and Stark’s Folly, he stopped, crouched, and waited. Riffle perched on the ledge, he lay sprawled on the dirty roof. He felt the wind, calculated the distance, and ran the variables through the formula the army had him memorize; others had needed to carry a notebook, but Barnes had been smart enough to do the math in his head. It gave him an edge, allowed him to make the shot that much quicker, and made sure three goons lay dead on the roof of Stark’s Folly before a single one could cry out or call attention to the scope shining in the mid-day sun.
Riffle on his back once more, he raced across the roofs and jumped the gulfs between them, offering each of the three limp forms a bullet to the head just to make sure they wouldn’t be raising any alarms.
“Friday, inform Stark that Ice Bear has left the couch,” he said in his monotone just in case the AI decided to patch him through directly to the man’s helmet or any of the others’ ear pieces.
“Boss has been informed. He is still paralyzed, but wanted me to tell you that it took you long enough.”
He smirked as he stole silently down the roof access stairwell. There was a guard outside the solid metal fire door. Slow and silent, he pulled the handle down. Ideally, their positions would be reversed so he could throw the door wide and knock the mook off his feet, but the door opened in his direction. He waited until the guard turns his face away, the helmet on his head offering Bucky a blind spot in which to open the door and roll noiselessly into the hall. The poor bastard barely had time to register that another person was in the corridor with him before Bucky’s hands were on him. His neck snapped without his mouth offering anything to alert his superiors to the intruder.
The body fit neatly into the landing behind the roof access door. Bucky took a moment to search him, finding an access card and a radio. The one he slid into a pocket in his pants; the other he held to his ear, listening for news that he had been compromised or the others were injured. The radio crackled before a tight, humorless voice issues a series of orders, instructing certain guards to make their way to different rooms. No one was ordered to the roof. He was safe for now.
Without knowing the extent of this particular hornet’s nest, his best and only real option was to work his way systematically through each floor, picking the guards off until he found the others and/or eliminated the entirety of the threat.
“Ice Bear doesn’t suppose Friday has a way of knowing just how many people are breathing in this joint,” he muttered.
“Sorry, Sarge,” Friday said with a synthetic sigh. “I don’t have access to the building’s camera feeds or wifi.”
“Damn,” he cursed, then stood. “No matter, Ice Bear has been in worse spots than this.”
Taking the guard’s sidearm and spare rounds, he moved back into the hallway, unlocking each door and scanning each room, shooting whatever moved. This was how he made his way through the building, floor by floor, room by room, bullet after bullet, body after dead body. He was four floors down before the alarm was finally raised.
“Boss says they’re on to you, Sarge. Half a platoon heading your way,” Friday warned, though the words came at the same time the thunder of booted feet echoed down the corridor.
Barnes found the most defensible position he could, behind a fat cement pillar placed seemingly at random in an odd joggle of the hallway. As far as old buildings went, this one was certainly the strangest he had ever been in, and he had stalked through any number of haphazard Soviet shitholes. For once, that might work to his advantage.
The guards advanced on him in a double step march, guns at the ready. Forced to stay in a narrow formation because of the width of the hallway, they appeared like rows of ducks in the shooting gallery on Coney Island. He almost smiled as the first row dropped to their knees.
They gave no warning before opening fire, but, then, neither did he. Bullets passed through skulls before lodging themselves into the thighs behind them. Eight guards dropped to the floor – four dead, four screaming in pain as they grasped at bloody wounds. Years ago, on the front, Bucky had seen how demoralizing a wounded soldier was to the surrounding men, which was why he so often aimed to maim and not kill his enemies. It was certainly working a treat now. Six men pushed their way through the ranks and ran, abandoning their guns as they did. The remaining fourteen guards were put down quickly after that, most fell without ever getting a shot off.
“Ice Bear has eliminated the immediate threat,” he said. “Ice Bear will continue with his original plan, which, Ice Bear would like to point out, is a much better one that Stark’s.”
“Fuck you, Man-bun,” Stark croaked.
“Ice Bear will not accept criticism from a man drooling into his own helmet.”
“You doing that, Stark?” Sam asked over the comm, his voice slow and words slurred but undeniably filled with laughter.
“Ice Bear requests that you all shut up so he can listen for threats,” Bucky said, trying hard to keep his voice even.
No one replied, which he hoped was because of his request and not because they had been killed. He would have heard the shot through the comms if they had been. That’s what he told himself anyway. He ran through the rooms now; the guards were expecting him, putting up a fight where before they were caught with their pants down – literally, in the case of the man he found in the ninth floor men’s room. They might know how to march, but, for the most part, these were not battle-hardened soldiers. Some could barely work their guns. Most forgot the basic rule of keeping their heads down when not firing. He felt bad killing them, so he shot them in the legs when possible, in the shoulder when that wasn’t an option. They’d be out of commission, and it wasn’t as if he needed to keep them quiet anymore.
Down and down he went, more guards ran at him and were cut down before they could finish shouting their threats. Platoons were marched and all dropped as had the first. Close to eighty in all were felled before he finally hit the basement and found the doors Natalia had questioned. Salt was first. It was a single, solid metal door five inches thick and reinforced with rods of what might have been titanium. He gave it a knock with his metal fist. No one answered.
“Ice Bear has reached Door Number One.”
Natalia’s voice came to him through the ear piece, slurred and slow but no less fierce. “2-0-3-8-7-8-8-8-1-6”
She finished speaking the numbers before he had even uncovered the keypad hidden in a recess next to the door. With the hidden panel revealed, he stabbed each number in the order she had said. As he pressed the six, the locks hissed their release and the door moved aside as if it weighed nothing.
He grabbed an empty soda can from the trashcan nearby and tossed it into the open door. A hail of bullets shot out at it, sending the hollow metal cylinder dancing across the floor.
“Feel free to grenade their asses. We’re behind Door Number Two,” Sam managed to say with some speed.
“Sam read Ice Bear’s mind,” he said, tearing a grenade free from his jacket, leaving the pin dangling from it as he counted to three and threw the explosive into the room.
He heard the shout and the scramble to escape, but it was too late. The wall behind him shook with the force of the explosion, men screamed, and Bucky rolled into the room, taking out anything that still moved. He stayed low, his back to an overturned desk, listening and waiting, but no one made a sound, there wasn’t anyone still alive.
He stood, throwing away the guns he had no more rounds for and checking what ammo he had left before making his way through the room toward the door Natalia had marked with the pepper shaker. This door was not like the first. It was not metal, thick or reinforced. It appeared to be little more than a sheet of glass. He glared through it at the men standing over the people he considered his friends.
“Drop the guns,” a man said.
The speaker was tall and skinny, his cheeks hollow and hair thinning at the forehead, giving him a pronounced widow’s peak. All told, he looked like the vampire from an old flick Bucky remembered watching ages ago. The girl he had gone with had squeaked and hid her face in his chest whenever that monster appeared on screen. He frowned that he couldn’t remember her name.
“Drop the guns,” the vampire repeated. “I will kill them.”
Bucky slowly lowered each gun to the floor, the riffle from his shoulder, semi-automatic from his back, the pistols from his hip, side and boot.
“Is that all?”
He threw down the tiny .22 after fishing it from inside his jacket.
“What would that have done?” the vampire questioned laughingly.
“Poison-tipped rounds,” he replied.
“Ah.”
Guards moved into position around the door. Eight of them. He could tell by the way they moved that these were not like the others he had encountered. These men knew how to do more than just march and shout. These men knew how to hold a gun, how to kill. He had absolutely no qualms about putting them down.
At a gesture from the vampire, the door slid open. The guards advanced.
He felled one before any of them saw it coming. The guard dropped like a stone, a black military issue knife in his throat. Bullets flew, but none managed to hit him. He moved too fast, dropped and rolled, slashing out at their legs. People always forgot about their legs. They wore helmets, Kevlar vests, and body armor, but they never bothered to guard their legs. Legs were important. Sever the right tendons and a man was crippled by pain, also crippled for life if he lived. Aim a blade into the thigh high enough and a man would bleed out in mere minutes, after first falling into unconsciousness from the sudden drop in blood pressure. These were all lessons the remaining guards were now learning. Five fell and bled out from their femoral arteries. The other two lay screaming, clutching at their ankles as best they could.
“Ice Bear doesn’t need guns,” he informed the man.
The vampire offered a fast, unintelligible stutter of vowels and consonants before his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell unconscious to the floor. Bucky kicked him once just to make sure he was really passed out.
“Damn, boy,” Sam said, his words far clearer than they had been just minutes before. “How the hell did you take out the entire building that fast?”
He fought the smirk as he replied, “Ice Bear has many secrets.”
“I hate you, Man-bun,” Stark informed him flatly.
“Ice Bear said your plan was laughable,” he reminded the motionless suit on the floor. “If you had listened to Ice Bear, Ice Bear could still be at home watching Nadiya win.”
“Bullshit. Marie is taking that apron home,” Stark declared.
Bucky knelt down and pressed the hidden catch to retract the visor on the helmet. He stared down at the man fighting to break free of the paralyzing agent still in his bloodstream. Even helpless, the man was defiant.
“Twenty bucks on it,” Stark said, chin stubbornly jut as far as the helmet and his paralysis would permit.
“Ice Bear accepts your challenge.”