fossilised | It's AU time

It was really goddamn hard to have an argument with someone who couldn't even hear what you were saying, but Dugan wasn't about to give up easily either. He knew that Bucky had killed people, he had seen the CCTV footage before he got down here, but he also knew that Bucky had fired in defence of himself, and of the people around him, killing looters, thieves, and people trying to assault others. That didn't mitigate that killing was way too far an escalation for that, but he had been in a flashback and thought he was in a warzone, it made it understandable and he refused to believe that Barnes was a bad person.

Which was why this was so important. He typed furiously on his phone, planting his muscled body in the way to keep Steve from getting further in again while he did.

Because you're a civilian and this area is restricted. If I find him, I'm already risking arrest by cutting him loose when orders are to arrest him. I can't have a civilian along for the ride too. Go home, sir, you're doing more harm than good if you stay.

If there was one way to call off the dogs with Steve, it was to point out that he might be doing damage instead of helping. The blond's eyes softened. He didn't want to give up but he also didn't want to hurt Bucky through being stubborn.

"Find him." He snatched the phone from the soldier's hand and typed in his address. Technically Bucky was just upstairs from him but he didn't want the man to go there. Hopefully none of this would come out considering the waste land that Manhattan had become in less than forty-eight hours.

Steve shoved the phone back at the man and mouthed a thank you before he headed back to the street surface where it had just started to snow.

The streets were mostly empty. Cars were still being cleared. The dead were being cleared. Steve had no choice but to head home.

Thankfully it would not be too long of a walk. The hospital he had been taken to was close to Brooklyn and Steve was not too far over the bridge.

Steve wouldn't get more than a step into his building before he was being accosted by a bullet with long red hair and eyes that were swollen from crying. Too upset to see the brace and sling that Steve wore over one arm to keep his shoulder still, Natalia barrelled into him at top speed to hug the shit out of him.

"I have been calling you and calling you, and where have you been? I am thinking you are one of the dead and someone will be calling to tell me that my best friend is never coming home again."

Her voice was a wobbly mess for once. Usually so composed and calm, even in the most serious of situations, she had truly feared for Steve and she didn't know what she'd do if she lost him.

"I have been trying to call Thor. He has been working non-stop, and he needs to know. Hospital have called here, Loren has been found and is maybe going to die. Thor does not know his brother was even in Manhattan, none of us knew." Except Tony, Tony had known, because the two of them shared nearly everything. "Steven Grant Rogers, you never do that to me again."

In utter agony, Steve clung to Natalia. He'd gotten a little of his hearing back, just enough to know that she was talking but not really enough to make out the words. That would be all right for now, he was freezing and he was out of breath and he couldn't concentrate on anything but standing up right for now.

Steve didn't have the full story but it would turn out later that no one did. Footage of the large and small crafts swarming over Manhattan was shown everywhere but there were already politicians that said it was impossible. Even scientists were coming up blank without explanations because satellites showed nothing. Alien invasion, Russian invasion, a new drug released by ISIS causing mass hallucinations-- There were plenty of theories and no answers.

Nat's insistence to try and get something out of him finally make Steve break. The pain was enough that he cried out and pulled back, arm limp in the sling, hair still covered in dried blood.

His face was filthy.

"Can't hear, Nat. Bucky is missing. I'm sorry, I need to lie down--". It turned out he needed to puke actually. That would be the pain kicking in.

"Oh, Steven..."

Nat looked horrified by the state of him and immediately helped him up to his apartment. She stayed with him as he puked, rubbing his back gently, and than made sure that he took some of the painkillers in a little bag that the hospital had given him, cleaned him up, and got him into bed.

She sat next to him as though she were afraid to leave him alone, as if everything would be ripped from her if she didn't keep an eye on it. She couldn't watch out for Thor, out in the disaster areas clearing rubble from people and putting out fires, so she would watch out for Steven.

But she did try to call Thor every five minutes, silently begging him to pick up, even as she watched Steven's chest to make sure he still breathed.

The trouble was that reception wasn't great. Landlines were working periodically but anything that required a signal was not. The voice mail didn't even acknowledge that it was full. Thor had been with Nat when the crafts appeared. He'd gotten called in three hours later and had been on the job for just under two days. He'd barely slept and was exhausted but this was his home and he loved this city. He recalled watching firefighters rush into the World Trade Center back in Tromso and knew that this was his calling. When Loren announced he was going to New York, Thie heeded the call of the American Dream as well. They became citizens five years later and now he was rushing into buildings to save people that could not save themselves.

Thor arrived on scene at the Javitz two hours after Bruce Banner started surgery on his brother. He never knew. He helped carry out the body of a woman with crushed legs who had been dead for awhile by then and was part of the team that took down the fire even before the Army rolled in with their support from the Hudson River.

He had eaten something tasteless, made a brief stop at the hospital where Steve was getting the bullet removed and his brother was upstairs dying, before he was called to the subway tunnels by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Most of his company was on rest but Thor couldn't do more than cat nap. There was supposed gunfire in the tunnels and win the advanced gas and electronics held below ground, it could be a recipe for explosions. Thor accompanied the Fire Marshall into the subway and took off on his own looking for breaches.

He would be very sorry that he missed Loren twice. And that his girlfriend was worried sick. But this was his life .

Bucky had gone to ground deep in the tunnels, horrified by what he had done and yet, at the same time, not really realising what he had done. It took a further eight hours for him to be found, luckily by Dugan, who talked him into putting down the gun and then confiscated it right away. He took his old Sergeant out of the tunnels and to somewhere safe and quiet until he got him calmed down, then he explained to him what had happened and reassured him that all of the people that he had shot were genuinely doing bad things.

But that he would be best to just go home and pretend it hadn't happened, because nobody would be looking for yet another person who had been involved that night. Bucky listened to everything Timothy had to say with a very calm expression, took the cab money offered to him, and left. Steve would have a text waiting for him whenever he woke up.

From: BUCKY BARNES
To: STEVE ROGERS

Did I hurt you? Are you okay? I must have scared you. I'm sorry, I promise it will never happen again. I'm so sorry.

Down in the tunnels, Thor would be hailed by his supervisor as he worked on digging some of the subway tunnel out and checking the gas mains for any breaches. "Odinson! We've just had word that your brother was one of the casualties from last night, he's over at Lower Manhattan Hospital." One of the areas least hit and still functional.

There was no way oh this Earth that Steve was going to tell Bucky how he'd ended up so injured. His eyes opened at the rumble of the phone across the nightstand. Nat was across the room at the window, watching s steady parade of army and emergency response personnel head towards the bridge to clear it of the cars to get into Manhattan and put an end to the chaos still going on there.

Texting with one hand was difficult but obviously Bucky did that all the time. So Steve told him to just come home. Please.

Meanwhile, Thor was forced to stay on duty until he could be relieved. Fortunately, he'd put in far more time and effort than any of his crew and so the chief sent a replacement right away. Getting around Manhattan with its choke of abandoned cars was impossible save for on foot and so Thor went on foot. It took him an hour, already running on empty, to get to the hospital.

The buzz of staff didn't even look at him. What was one more fire fighter?

It took a while to find Loren, however, and indeed Thor only did because he saw Tony heading to the bathroom. He only need to be pointed in the right direction and he skidded into the intensive care room with worry and grief on his face.

Bruce had been running here, there, and everywhere. As an experienced surgeon, especially in field trauma, he had been utterly rushed off his feet. But the sudden rush of emergency had finally begun to die down and he had been able to start checking on his patients again. He accosted Tony outside the bathroom, hand on his shoulder.

"You should get yourself checked out too, some of your injuries were probably exacerbated by running around out there, and I want to make sure you didn't damage your lungs with smoke inhalation."

He led Tony back to the ICU room where Loren was hooked up to machines, a steady beep and the rise and fall of his chest at least seeming stable for now. He glanced over in surprise when he saw the newcomer - good Lord, that man was big, his biceps were larger than Bruce's head.

"Hi-- can I help you? I'm Dr. Banner, and this is Loren's partner, Tony Stark."

If the line about falling harder when you're larger had never been more truly spoken when Thor turned, exhausted blue eyes set into an ashy and unreadable scowl. "That's Loren's older brother." Tony, his brother's boyfriend, the man he had not known about until two days before explained to the doctor. Evidently, they knew each other. He looked pretty bad himself, spot in his hair and blood dried under his nails as if he had forgotten to scrub himself clean.

"Hello Doctor. Thank you for seeing to my brother. What is the update on his condition?" Thor had stood, easily a foot and a half taller than Bruce and Tony, and he offered a hand that could suffocate either one without effort. He'd set his helmet aside. His jacket was tossed over the chair back.

There was a sudden, gripping stillness to Tony, as if he had been afraid to ask himself and was still too afraid to know the answer to that question.

Honestly, Bruce was more worried about what this would do to Tony than to Thor. He had treated the man a lot over the years, and it had only been since he started his relationship with this man that he had seemed to start to come through the demons of his childhood.

"Well, the good news is that his vitals have all stabilised so, barring any unforeseen circumstances, the prognosis for survival is excellent. However, there was extensive internal injury, and we believe the spinal column was damaged. We won't know the extent of the damage until he wakes up and we can test his reflexes, but it's entirely possible he may require a wheelchair or, at the least, walking aids for the rest of his life."

But, really, compared to how bad it could have been...?

"Tony, you saved his life. You probably don't know this, Mr. Odinson, but Tony helped perform field surgery on your brother, and he definitely wouldn't have survived the night otherwise."

Tony was grim, though there was relief in his eyes to hear that, yes, thankfully, Loren would pull through. If he was in a wheelchair, if he needed walking aids, Tony could manage. He was pretty sure he could manage. Their lifestyle would change a great deal and Loren would likely become pretty nasty over having to be helped on a constant basis, but Tony wasn’t going to leave him just because of either of those. He wasn’t worried for himself. It was Loren’s life that bothered him.

It wasn’t like they both didn’t have money though. Loren’s selling of his place had actually brought in a lot of income. His shop did well. And Tony’s business was about to be booming once all of these cars were claimed and brought in for repairs. He could afford the best doctors and the best care. But Loren… Loren wouldn’t take it well.

“Stark, you are a good man. I am pleased more now than ever that my brother met you,” Thor said truthfully after Bruce had finished speaking of Stark’s heroics.

“I just did what anyone would,” he said, finally. “It was lucky that Banner was at the same book convention your brother was at, that’s all. I wouldn’t have known what to do. People aren’t like cars.”

It was true that Loren was not graceful in weakness, as long as he had his mind then he may well get through it without completely ruining the relationships that he had now. Not that he knew what was coming in his future, blissfully ignorant as he slept under the strong influence of the drugs.

"Now, what I want both of you to do is go home. Thor, you look exhausted and you've clearly come from helping out. You need rest. Tony, you've been here this whole time, and you're hardly without injuries yourself, so you need rest too. He's not going to wake up for at least another day, so please go home and take care of yourselves."

Someone else who was heading towards home was Bucky, confused and numb, feeling oddly detached from everything. He barely even flinched when people brushed by him in the street, the noises from the traffic faded in and out as memory kept brushing up inside him. He had shot people, innocent people, he thinks he might have shot Steve. But if he had then surely Steve wouldn't have told him to come home? He was scared to see fear in Steve's eyes, and judgement, not when he had finally found someone who looked at him like a person.

He slipped into the building and then into Steve's apartment, only coming to a halt beside Natalia as she slept in a chair by Steve's bedside.

"Steve?"

"Home? It's going to take hours to get back to Brooklyn. Just get me a cot and I'll sleep here," Tony said. He didn't know that some progress had been made clearing the streets. There was still no unauthorized travel, but cars had been cleared enough to allow one lane to be bypassed for emergency and military vehicles. "So nice try Banner. I've been relaxing. You've been working. You go sleep. How's that?" They could argue for awhile but Thor at least agreed to leave. He needed to check in on Natalia and then sleep and shower and return to work. He left Tony guard his brother for him. It was good to know he had that.

Steve had been in and out of consciousness for a little while. He slept away the pain and Nat had helped to wipe away some of the dirt and the blood, but he looked a fright, curled up on one arm, blankets just under his chin.

The sound of his name did make him stir, however, and he swallowed twice to coat his throat with saliva before he turned his head towards Bucky. Seeing him made Steve sit up just a little too quickly, the blanket pooling around his thighs and exposing his sling, but he looked nothing but relieved.

"Buck! You're home!"

Bucky nearly stepped back into the wall at the sight of how bad Steve looked. The sling drew his eyes and even if Steve didn't look horrified, Bucky certainly did, guilt and disgust at himself flickering across his face.

"Did I do that?"

The question was quiet and insistent.

He knew that Steve was a good guy, maybe he'd even try to downplay it, but Bucky couldn't let him. He really cared about this man, loved him, and if he had hurt him then that was unforgivable. It didn't matter the circumstances, because that was all excuses and if he did it once then he could do it again.

"God-- damnit, why aren't you in the hospital?"

"I was in the hospital," Steve jumped on. He couldn't answer the first question. "I didn't need to be taking up a bad... She's finally asleep. Let's go to the living room." And because Bucky needed to know that Steve wasn't afraid of him, he asked him for a hand up.

Even if Bucjy didn't take it, Steve would eventually get to the couch, his boyfriend hopefully in tow so that they could continue their conversation more quietly.

"What happened? I can't get any straight answers. I was on the subway, it shut down and as we were all walking along the rail, part of the station collapsed right when he hit the platform. And that's all I remember until you saved me." And after that... After that he remembered a whole lot of killing. And Bucky flying into rages-- the man was dangerous, Steve knew that. But he wanted to help him, not lock him away.

"I don't know," said Bucky, at least having been willing to help Steve to the couch and then sit opposite him so that they could talk for a while. He didn't really know how this would all work out, but he knew that things wouldn't be the same again. "Nobody seems to know, but whatever it was is gone now."

He spread his fingers, looking down as if he expected to see blood when there wasn't any, Dugan had made damn sure that he got cleaned off in the safe house before he sent him on his way.

"You know what's fucked up? I killed people, I kind of remember it, and I don't know how I feel about it. Why is it being heroic to shoot a man and kill him to defend yourself or others in Iraq or Afghanistan, but if you do it here then it's murder?"

"Because it's war," Steve said softly. The people that Bucky had killed had been doing wrong things like stealing or trying to force themselves on one of the teenage girls that had been with them. Had a situation like this never come up, maybe they would have been good men and never tipped the edge into an uneasy life departure of the evil way of life. Or, perhaps they were always bad men. It was so hard to tell in the moment. "You had orders. Here... You had a choice to ask questions."

Bucky could have done anything. He could have intimidated or threatened but he shot first and never bothered to talk. That was why this was murder. It had been unsanctioned.

Steve knew that it was wrong to do anything other than turn Bucky in, but he wasn't going to turn anyone in. Whatever had knocked out all of the power and phone reception in the city made it possible for Bucky's crimes to go unseen. And Steve wanted to keep it that way.

"But Manhattan was like war. For at least that day. And you kept me and all of those kids safe."

At least Steve wasn't denying that what he had done was murder. That was a relief in its own way, it would make it easier to cut ties and do what he had to do. Because there was no way in hell that he could just pretend to live a normal life after that, not knowing that he could snap again and kill more people. Kill Steve.

"I didn't know where I was," mumbled Bucky, though it sounded like an excuse to his own ears. "Everything was sand, and I just knew if they got hold of us... where we'd end up, and I couldn't go back there again. Steve, I fucked up, I hurt people. I didn't want to be that guy, I've never wanted to be that guy."

He scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I can't risk it happening again, especially not to you. You understand that, don't you? I'm like a fucking rabid dog, it's just a matter of when not if."

"You have only ever protected me," Steve said, gritting his teeth. If Bucky left, he would likely end up in jail or in a hospital or group home where he could be monitored and everyone else would feel safe. Only Steve, and perhaps that kind young soldier that served with Bucky, could protect him. Steve was sure of that. It had nothing to do with ego.

With the hand of his uninjured arm, Steve lightly placed his fingers against Bucky's knee.

"That I was hurt wasn't on you. It was on that kid that tackled you. Your finger slipped. If I know that, then you can at least do me the courtesy of knowing that yourself."

Steve wasn't going to let Bucky leave him. There wasn't a whole lot he could do right now about it but he wasn't standing by to let life happen to him without his say.

"And what about the other people that I shot, Steve? Did my finger slip those times too? How can you be taking this so calmly?"

He had been in the goddamn army and it had still freaked him out when he saw men that he had become friends with kill others, it freaked him out when he killed too, until he got far too used to it. How was Steve sitting there looking like he had been beaten to hell and back, still looking at him as if he was worth protecting.

"I've become a fucking monster. And I don't want to hurt anyone again, I can't do that. Jesus, think of all those people who are never going to go home, or the families waiting for them, and I did that."

Though he completely understood where Bucky was coming from, he absolutely did, this was still maddening. “You need to stop and take a breath.” Steve wasn’t really the tough love sort but he needed to reign in the situation or it was going to get away from him. “Whatever happened two days ago isn’t something that is likely to happen again.” Hopefully. If those objects that the news had been reporting on actually had been hostile, they wouldn’t be home right now and relief efforts would not have started. “You had a moment—“

He put up his hand before Bucky said something else. He wasn’t having it.

“You had an episode triggered by environmental conditions. That isn’t you. That was your training kicking in. Training that saved my life. And those kids’ lives. And who knows how many? I don’t want to hear any more of this self pity, Buck. You have nothing at all to be ashamed of because you had no control. You got me out of there alive. You're not a monster!"

Maybe it was because Steve didn't usually snap in such an authoritative tone, but it sure as hell made Bucky shut up and listen even if just for a few moments. He still couldn't quite get past what he had done, but that Steve was still defending him was utterly amazing.

"...that's what Dum-Dum told me," he said, voice low and eyes suspiciously wet. "He found me in the tunnels, someone I served with. He told me that he'd checked out all the footage they could find, and he'd done background checks and... everything I did was in defence of you and those kids. It wasn't right, but he said that's why he wanted to let me go, because it wasn't wrong either."

Fucking Dugan. Fucking Steve. How was he surrounded by such amazing people.

"So what? I just go back to life as normal and pretend like it didn't happen?"

“Yeah. Well. No, you can’t just-- No one can ever forget that. But yeah, pretty much, we have to go on. We always have to go forward.” Steve learned that after his father and mother each died. Sitting around and wallowing did nothing for a person. He’d had no choice in the matter and this terrible situation that they were both in was absolutely no different.

Steve moved his hand from Bucky’s knee to take his hand.

“You did something good. Your intentions were completely flawless.” If Steve had to hammer that home then he would, until poor Bucky was left emotionally bloody but at least better adjusted than he was when he walked through the door. “We can move on and work on the rest,” Steve said solemnly. He knew what he was talking about here.

Bucky understood what he was saying, Steve was still making statements like 'we' can do this, and 'we' can move on, like he was still going to stick by Bucky even through this. He sure as hell didn't know if he was worth this kind of effort, but he couldn't deny that it was touching.

"I love you."

It just sort of slipped out, fingers twining around Steve's so tightly that it might be a little bit painful.

"I swear I'll help you get back on your feet, look out for you until your arm is all healed up."

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