fossilised | It's AU time

Bucky didn't know much except that they were surrounded and that Steve was-- he wasn't really sure. Some part of him knew this was his boyfriend, but that didn't make sense as to why he was in a war zone and so a superior officer or a comrade in arms was an easy enough substitution to make.

"Sir-- yes, sir."

He made as if to lower his weapon, but then everything went wrong. One of the other teenagers saw he was going to lower the gun and decided to try and be a hero and tackle him. The hit to his legs caused Bucky to fire, the bullet going straight through Steve's shoulder and ricocheting down the tunnel, though thankfully nobody else was hurt.

Staring in horror at what he had done, thinking Steve dead rather than knocked back with a shoulder wound, Bucky took off running down the tunnel to the sound of a hail of bullets at his back.

The hit was hard. Steve didn’t feel anything, just the blow, and it knocked out his breath. There were screams and shots and the ringing in his ears just got worse until that was all he heard. It left him feeling really insular, like his world existed only in the space between his two ears. He was yelling, but he couldn’t hear himself, begging Bucky to come back, begging everyone to stop shooting… And they did. But only because gunshots in such a confined space were detrimental to everyone’s hearing.

They dragged him out easily, though. He was light, he had a head injury and now his shoulder felt useless. He wasn’t awake for the rest, taken right passed where Tony was sitting at Loren’s bedside.

Bruce would be the one to take care of the bullet in his shoulder – he was a surgeon and they needed him so right to work he went – but after that, Steve was left alone. His world was silent and so he didn’t hear anyone calling his name as he left the hospital in the gown and his jeans. It was all too easy to slip into the crowd of people requiring aid or wanting to give it.

Much too easy.

Steve was shocked at the state of the city. Everything was a miserable mess. Everything was in ruin. There were still dead on the streets, covered in scratchy white blankets, waiting to be picked up.

He went down into the subway, alone. Bucky had come for him. He had to return the favor, huddled up in a borrowed (all right, stolen) coat. No one stopped him. The subway system had not been cleared, not yet, but there was a lot more infrastructure work to worry about before anyone swept the tunnels. “Bucky?”

His voice was thin and high. He was drugged up and freezing and in pain. He couldn’t hear himself. He had no idea that he was just basically whispering.

It was a terrible idea for Steve to be down here alone when he was in such bad shape. He could collapse, he could get confused, he couldn't hear anything. Though hopefully that last ailment was temporary and would fade away in time thanks to the loudness of the bullets that had gone through the tunnels.

He would be down there for about forty five minutes before a light appeared in the darkness, a bobbing torch and a man running up to him wearing army fatigues looking concerned.

He said something to Steve, and then realised he couldn't be hurt and grabbed a definitely non-standard issue phone out of his pocket and typed on the screen as fast as he could.

Sir, you can't be down here, the structure isn't safe. Let me take you back up to the surface, okay? My name is Private Timothy Dugan."

The light of the cell phone and the words themselves were a comfort that Steve wasn't sure he wanted. "Thank you," he said, only feeling his mouth move and hearing the voice in his head barely beneath the ringing vibration from the damage done to his ears. He hoped he was speaking loud enough and not shouting. "I am looking for a man down here. Sargent James Barnes. Lost him yesterday afternoon when they saved us... He suffers from PTSD."

It was the best way he could put it and he looked up at this man with hopeful, sorrowful blue eyes. He just wanted some good news for once.

"Did you find him?" Was he safe? He'd vouch for Bucky... And he'd never tell him that he was the one that shot him. His arm would be fine. They told him so. He just need half a year of rest and recovery.

This was the guy that had been with Bucky when he had flipped out? Dum-Dum hadn't been down here at the time, but he had heard about the incident from some of the other men and he knew immediately who they were talking about. It's why he came down here, he owed the Sergeant a hell of a lot more than just looking for him down some subway tunnels.

It took a moment for him to erase the message and then type over again, holding it up for Steve to see.

I'm looking for him. Me and some others, but I'm not going to hand him over. I know the Sarge, we served together, he saved my life out there. You a friend of his?

"How did-- How did you know he was down here?" Steve didn't mean to be skeptical but he was just really worried that this could be a ploy to get him out of the tunnels. Then again, he should t be here anyway. Bucky might have recovered enough to seek him out.

Or go home.

As the private started to type on his phone, Steve reached out to put a hand over the device and to lower it down again, a shake to his head. It didn't matter.

If this man said he was only looking for Bucky for the right reasons, Steve had to trust him. They couldn't waste time arguing through texts.

It would be okay for Steve to trust Timothy Dugan, he was a good man and he wasn't lying. Though the other members of his team had been sent here to find and arrest Bucky, even if they only had a description rather than a name, he was down here to find and smuggle him out. It broke his heart that the Sergeant maybe hadn't been getting the help he needed after being discharged.

But Steve couldn't be down here.

Even if he wasn't a civilian, he was obviously injured and needed to be in bed. Hell, he probably shouldn't even be out of hospital. So he gently started to shoo him back towards the subway entrance, one hand typing out a quick message.

You still can't be here, sir. Go home, or go back to the hospital.

It was easy to shoo him away, Steve wasn't physically capable of stopping himself from being moved along even when he was healthy, but he reached out to a railing along the wall with his good hand and tried to dig his feet in. His voice rose to a shout in his struggle. "He needs someone that can talk him down!" Steve said, sounding self righteous even if he was mostly just worried about the state Bucky was in. "He was in his head for too long. He was having a flash back and when you guys showed up, everything went from bad to worse--"

Bucky had killed a lot of people yesterday. It wasn't Steve's job to decide if they deserved it or not, though.

"What does it matter if I stay? We can cover more ground-- hey! Stop pushing me! You know I'm not going anywhere!" The morphine was wearing off. His shoulder would be in agony soon. But Steve was too tenacious to give up.

Even if it was the best thing for him.

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?"

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