The immediate consequence of Steve's latest yes was that Bucky broke all his previous patterns and went to ground. He wasn't at the next predicted location before or after the Avengers and there weren't any new hits, of any kind, for almost three weeks.

Steve thought maybe this was it. Maybe he shouldn't have answered the question.

After the first week, with no call, no sightings, and no sign of activity, Steve's initial optimism dropped away with all the speed of the motorcycle going over a cliff. Steve had never done well when he couldn’t fight. Later, he would have to admit that, if he had been alone, he might well have let himself just waste away.

His sleeping habits had been shit since Bucky’s vanishing act, not that they’d been great before. He stopped interacting with the others outside of official avengers business. He had no appetite or motivation for actual meals. He consumed calories only because it was routine—and because JARVIS insisted on reminding him to do so. Not wanting to hear from anyone, unless it was Bucky, Steve tried to ask him to stop. The denial was firm. JARVIS would have to report if he was endangering himself.

After three straight days of not seeing anyone at all, Natasha let herself into his bedroom. Steve turned his head from where he was lying on his back on the floor next to the bed and saw she was carrying a dark purple canvas bag lined with silvery insulation material. It smelled like food. Meat and potatoes vegetables and butter. Fresh bread. Something sweet and dairy. Chocolate.

He wanted none of it and glared halfheartedly. It was hard to muster the emotional energy to really protest either the intrusion or the assumption.

Feeling half out of body, he observed her put the bag down next to him and reach out with both hands to grab him by the collar. With something like detached curiosity, he let her pull him upright and drag him sideways so he was propped in a sitting position against the side of the bed.

He blinked slowly. Her mouth was an unhappy line.

"I've been eating," Steve said dully.

Shaking her head, Natasha corrected him. "No, Steve. You've been maintaining your super soldier body."

He flinched at maintaining and knew she was right.

"You can do better than this, Steve.”

She reached into the bag and lifted out a takeout box which she set in his lap and a fork which she slapped directly into his hand. She told him to open the box.

He complied. Chicken. Green beans. Mashed potatoes. A roll with a little foil pat of butter. Nothing complicated or unfamiliar.

“Eat,” she said.

Steve stabbed a forkful of green beans and put them in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed mechanically. It was as tasteless as Rumlow’s pasta had been.

“You have to make an effort here, Steve.” Natasha balanced on her toes, back against the bedroom wall, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands.

He stared at her obliquely, hoping she would leave. He’d deserve it if she did.

“I missed my chance,” he rasped, finally putting words to a persistent dark thought. “I didn’t have to accept his terms. Tony was right. I could have asked questions.”

Natasha’s face softened incrementally, but she said nothing.

“He called the tower,” Steve said. “He told JARVIS his conditions so they were in place before we ever talked.” He knew that she knew what he was getting at. He couldn’t have been the only one thinking it, even if only Tony had said something. To give himself a little more time, he took a forkful of chicken and pretended it needed more chewing than it did. “I was one of his HYDRA handlers,” he stated bleakly. “I could have ignored everything he said and he still would have listened to me. He wouldn’t have had a choice.” He stared at the wall next to Natasha, unable to meet her eyes. “You shouldn’t have backed me up with Tony. He was right. I should have asked questions while I had the chance.”

Natasha lifted her head and regarded him with a carefully non-judgemental gaze. “You could have given him orders,” she said.

Steve nodded and looked away again. “Yeah.”

“And he could hate and fear you,” she added, tone unchanged, “as much as his other handlers.” She caught his eyes when they darted back to her face. “You’re not HYDRA, Steve. They didn’t make you one of them. A real HYDRA handler would have crossed that line. You still know where it is.”

Wordless, Steve shook his head. He wasn’t even sure what he was denying.

With a sigh, Natasha reachd into the bag and pulled out another box for herself.

They ate in silence. Steve picked at his food while Natasha ate hers at a more measured pace.

When she was finished, she watched him for a while, then said, “Are you done?”

He nodded.

She took his half-finished box of food, packed everything back into the canvas bag, and slung everything over her shoulder. For a long moment, she stood over him, looked down. “Steve,” she said.

He looked up and knew she could read his shame and exhaustion.

“You’re making breakfast for everyone tomorrow,” she said.

Maybe he would have resented the order, but all he could feel was relief that someone still believed he could accomplish even that much.

He nodded.

Natasha turned to go. She’d just closed the door when Steve abruptly found himself on his feet.

“Wait,” he said, opening the door to find her waiting with raised eyebrows. He froze, flushing with shame. “What makes you so sure? I crossed so many lines already.”

The corner of her mouth twitched up in what was less a smirk and more a grimace. “He talked to you, Steve,” she reminded him, but he didn’t understand.

“That doesn’t mean he trusts me or even should trust me,” he pointed out.

She frowned at him. “Yes,” she said. “It does.”

The Avengers were onto him. The more responsibilities to the team he had, the more he had to leave his room and interact with them. His sleep quality was so low he wasn’t sure why he even tried.

Clint told him flat-out that if anyone (read HYDRA) had ever developed a supersoldier anti-depressant, they would have made him take it, even if Natasha had to immobilize him with a Widow’s Bite first.

Steve didn’t care. If there was no light at the end of the tunnel (read Bucky), he didn’t care if this heavy numb misery crushed him to nothing. The world had managed without him for seventy years. He wasn’t essential. He wasn’t so arrogant as to think they really needed him, not like Bucky, and if he couldn’t help Bucky, what the hell was he good for except hurting people and inspiring others to do the same?

You can’t help being what you are, Rumlow had said. Steve didn’t know what he was, but he didn’t feel like much of a superhero.

He caught himself wondering if the maintenance chair really had been a sort of kindness and then stopped in the middle of drying a plate, put it down on the counter with shaking hands, and fled to initiate a meeting with the deprogrammer he had been avoiding for months.

If that wasn’t rock bottom, he didn’t know or want to know what was.

“You can help me fix my thinking,” he blurted, before a word could come out of the other man’s mouth.

The deprogrammer looked at him with interest. “Precisely,” he said slowly. “I can help you fix your thinking, but the hard work will be all yours. Do you understand my meaning, Steve Rogers?”

Steve nodded jerkily and collapsed into a chair across the room from the man.

“How do I start?”

Bucky called four days later. It felt like a reward from the universe, despite what Bucky had to say.

It wasn’t a mission report. Not really.

“I went to the Ranch,” the Winter Soldier said, without a trace of Brooklyn. “The computers were intact.”

That might be useful information. There hadn’t been a question, however, so Steve said nothing.

Natasha squeezed his hand. The new protocol for Bucky’s calls was that Steve not take them alone.

“There were records... “ Bucky trailed off raggedly and Steve was struck by sudden foreboding stronger than the accent creeping into Bucky’s voice. “Records of… Fuck, Steve. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldna believed it. I thought… But it’s true.”

Steve didn’t dare respond to that when he wasn’t sure what Bucky meant and--

“You’re not who I thought,” said Bucky. “Stop hunting me. You won’t like what happens if you try to bring me in again.”

No. He opened his mouth to say it, but Bucky beat him to the punch.

“I shoulda gone with Rumlow,” Bucky growled and hung up before Steve could even process a reaction.

At least they had two more location hits to go on now. The prospect of Bucky returning to HYDRA galvanized their efforts to find him first.

When Tony’s next prediction was a location in Arizona, not even out of the country, Steve convinced the team he was stable enough to go along. It wasn’t like they expected combat. They probably wouldn’t even find anything.

“Be careful, Steve,” Natasha reminded him, unnecessarily. “If he decides to take you out, he could do it with a bullet from a mile away and never give you a chance to change his mind.”

Steve set his jaw. “I’ll take that risk.”

“There’s nothing here either,” Steve reported. He looked down from the edge toward the winding Colorado river far below. All that red and gold and blue. How he wished Bucky, the Bucky he’d known or the version he’d thought he was starting to understand, was there to see it with him.

If he threw himself over the edge, would the fall kill him? No, he decided. He’d hit things on the way down, lose momentum. The fall from the train hadn’t killed Bucky. A tumble into the Grand Canyon wouldn’t kill Steve.

He took a step back and told himself he hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of stepping off the cliff. He almost believed it. He’d had a lot of practice believing his own lies now.

“Do you want me to circle around and pick you up?” was all Natasha asked.

“Nah,” Steve told her. “I’ll take the scenic route. Feel like I might even sketch a little. See you back at the hotel.”

“I’ll see you later, then. Keep your phone on, Steve.”

When it came, it wasn't just a bullet from a mile away. It was also a tranq from less than fifty yards. The bullet took him in the calf. The tranq hit him in the shoulder.

The sniper could have put them wherever he wanted. That suggested he wanted Steve alive. Steve put pressure on his leg wound but didn’t try to fight the effects of the tranquilizer. He passed out.

Steve woke up. The room was mostly dark and very cold. It smelled of old blood. He was hanging from a hook in the ceiling, restrained with a familiar set of mag cuffs. His leg, though it pulsed with hot agony, had been bandaged. His cowl, gloves, and boots were all missing.

Bucky stood in front of him, spinning a knife through the fingers of his right hand.

“Are you here to kill me?” Steve asked him.

Bucky smiled, eyes closed almost to slits. The expression contained zero humor. “Some of the others asked me that too, you know.” He opened his eyes and cocked his head, examining Steve critically. “I’m going to ask you what I asked them,” he said. His tone was conversational but his expression was tight and his eyes were dark and hard with rage and fear.

Steve nodded as best he could. He owed Bucky whatever answers he could give.

“Why should I kill you?” Bucky asked, which was the opposite of what Steve had expected.

Didn’t matter. He knew what he had to say. Steve licked his lips. He couldn't say he was sorry. He couldn’t explain. Not yet. Maybe not ever if his answer was enough to provoke Bucky to kill him now. “I raped you. I beat you. I stood by and let you be tortured. I put you in the chair they used to wipe your mind, even when you struggled. Even when you tried to resist. I ordered you wiped when you remembered Natasha before Insight launched. I watched you scream. I hurt you and I let you be hurt.” He had to try anyway. “And I am so fucking sorry. But I did.”

Bucky looked utterly lost, shocked. Why? Why did he look surprised? “You’re… you’re the first one,” he said, slowly, wonderingly, and so clearly hurting over it. “You’re the first one who said you were sorry. The first one who said it was… rape and torture. I knew you were different.”

“I… uh… what?” Steve had told him all this before. They’d argued about it. What had happened to make Bucky so surprised now?

“I’m sorry too,” Bucky said and Steve was confused until he added, “for the bullet. Just because supersoldiers heal fast doesn’t mean we don’t feel it. I know. I’m sorry. I had to know.”

“Know?”

“That I could hurt you, Captain.” The last word came out dark and twisted. A curse.

Steve took a deep breath. He deserved that, he did. Bucky could shoot him in the head. Could leave him here to freeze or starve or suffocate. Could call up what was left of HYDRA and turn him over. It would be less than Steve deserved for his betrayal.

“I understand,” he said heavily.

Bucky didn’t say anything for several minutes. Steve began to lose feeling in his fingers and toes. He said nothing.

“For the sake of the relationship I thought we once had,” Bucky pronounced, “I choose not to kill you.”

Steve opened his mouth to say… Thank you? I understand? I’m sorry?

Bucky glared. Steve snapped his mouth shut.

“Don’t look for me anymore. I remember more every day. If I see you again, I might feel differently.”

Steve nodded weakly. “I’m so sorry, Bucky. Whatever you need to--”

Bucky was staring at him with wide eyes. “Bucky?” he repeated.

Steve stared back, not understanding.

“But…” his voice was suddenly small, uncertain, afraid, barely even accusing. “You said I’m not Bucky.”