milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Uh oh," she says, smiling a little in commiseration.

"Sounds like there's a story there."

"There is," he admits. "Want the short version or the longer one?"

"Whichever you feel like tellin'," she says, and leans her chin on her hand to watch him.

"I've got all the time in the world."

"Well," he says, slowly. "I told you before that Steve got me out. It was a hell of a fight. My handlers -- Command had given me a mission. Two targets, level six. One of them was Steve. They sent me to kill my best friend, and my -- and I didn't even recognize him. Them."

He shakes his head and downs half the coffee. Bar refills it unasked, and adds whiskey to it, also unasked.

"Anyway. I failed, thankfully. And the blow I took to the head during the fight, a couple of other things, not sure what - it woke me up. I pulled Steve out of the river, made sure he was alive, and disappeared for two years."

Zinda watches him, sympathetic. He's just heard the worst story she's got to tell without judgment, and he'll get none from her.

She makes a mental note to tell him she'd met his pal Steve, and nods at him to continue. "Hell of a long time to be a ghost."

"Would have been longer if I'd had my way," he tells her. "I was pretty good at hiding. Too good, I guess." His expression now is bitter and weary. "There's a guy - Helmut Zemo. Sokovian special forces. The city of Novi Grad, Sokovia's capital - it was destroyed in a battle involving the Avengers, and Zemo decided to destroy them in turn. He used me to do it."

Bucky sighs, takes another sip of coffee, realizes how it's been altered, and takes a bigger swallow.

"He disguised himself as me and blew up a meeting - a United Nations peace meeting, basically. Got caught on camera deliberately, and got everyone, everyone looking for me - for the Winter Soldier, HYDRA's murderous terrorist, the world's most wanted assassin."

The corner of his mouth twists into something wry. "Sharon worked for the Joint Terrorism Task Force. She figured out where I was from one of the tips that came in. She sent the SWAT team after me - she had to - but she gave Steve the lead early in hopes he could get to me first. He did. But it all went to hell when SWAT broke in, and the new king of Wakanda, who thought I'd killed his father with that bomb - anyway the long and the short of it is that I couldn't run fast enough to get away and they caught us. I think Steve would have been okay - Tony had the lawyers on it and was trying to work a deal with him, for him and for Sam - except Zemo wasn't finished. They had me in an underground holding cell, where they were bringing in a psych for evaluation. Only Zemo disguised himself as the psych, got to me instead, and activated the Winter Soldier."

There's a lot to parse in everything he just said, but Zinda's expression goes from startled to scowling midway through.

"You just say Sharon turned you in??"

First she toys with his affections and makes him think she's chosen some other guy, and then she turns him in to the authorities when he'd done nothing wrong at all? Zinda's blue eyes flash as her mental approval rating of the other woman drops like a rock.

But the rest is even worse, and she puts a hand over his new metal wrist, sympathetic. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry."

"She had to," he insists. "Everyone saw the camera footage. She thought it was me - my fault, that I'd done it. She knew if I was activated - the Winter Soldier would have blown up that building without hesitation. People died. More could have. She had to."

He sighs a little, quietly grateful as she touches his metal arm, rather than pulling back from it.

"Steve managed to get me back - again - but I damn near killed him, and Sharon, and Natasha, and did kill a number of others on Zemo's orders. We got to a safe location, and went over what he'd gotten from me. We thought we knew what he wanted. We were wrong."

His eyes are bleak when he meets her gaze. "Tony came to help, in the end. We went to track down Zemo - me, Steve, and then Tony. It was a trap. Zemo wanted Tony to see what I'd done, as the Winter Soldier, years before. I killed his parents on another mission. Steve stopped him from killing me. They haven't spoken since. And as a result, the Avengers are broken and scattered to the ends of the earth. Zemo got what he wanted."

Zinda doesn't look convinced – she takes stand by your man as seriously as any gospel – but she drops it for the moment, listening in sympathetic silence to the rest, her warm hand still on his arm, though she has no idea if he can feel it.

"Okay," she says, gently. "You think this Tony, maybe he'll come around? He's gotta know you didn't do it on purpose, right?"

"I don't think that matters to him. He's hurt, and mad that Steve picked me over him - the way he sees it, anyway." Bucky sighs. "I hope he does come around. Steve gave him a way to get in touch."

"Stubborn," she says, shaking her head.

"I hope so, too. Once he cools off, maybe."

"Maybe." He hopes so, anyway. "I thought maybe if I could talk Steve into reaching out from a safe location... but I don't know."

"Could be that might work," she nods. "Seein' as he's the one you can work on."

She wants to go back to that part where the woman he's seeing turned him in and kicked off this whole chain of events, but even Zinda knows when she's got to sort of work her way around a topic. "I met him, you know?" she says, instead.

"Your buddy Steve?"

Everything about him brightens like the sun. "You did?"

"Sure did."

She smiles back at him, pleased to have hit on a better topic of conversation. "Nice fella."

"He's the best," Bucky tells her, with absolute sincerity. "I'm really glad you met."

Zinda just smiles at him, wishing for his sake that meeting had gone just a little better – but, well, everybody has bad days. Could be she just caught him on one.

"He was tickled pink when I told him I recognized him 'cause of you," she says, absolutely honestly.

"I bet. Used to be he felt a little awkward coming here, there for a while," Bucky tells her. "Steve can be pretty self-effacing sometimes, and he got recognized a lot. But that's different."

Understanding flashes through Zinda's face, and her smile turns a whole lot warmer.

Well, that must be it. She'll just have to try again another time. "I remembered seein' him in the pamphlet you showed me," she says. "Tell him I say hi, will you?"

"I will," he promises. "Count on it." He's delighted at the thought of the two of them getting to know each other, and it shows.

"I'll keep an eye out for him next time I come in," she says. "Sharon, too."

Her tone's a little cooler with that second name, but – well – Zinda just wants to talk to her.

He can't fail to miss the shift in her normally warm, cheerful tone.

"Zinda."

"Well!" Zinda sniffs, just a little.

"Toyin' with your affections is one thing; turning you in to get jailed is a whole other story, and frankly neither of 'em sound all that good."

Edited 2021-10-13 00:00 (UTC)

"Toying with -- what?" He looks completely caught off guard by that.

"She didn't - she didn't do anything like that. And I told you, she had to turn me in."

"She made you think she'd gone for someone else, didn't she?" Zinda says, warming to her subject, then looks slightly mulish at his protestations.

"I'm sure she thought she did," she says, every indication being that she, Zinda, is sure there was some other possible way, one that didn't involve jail cells.

"I just think it wouldn't be such a bad idea for me to have a chat with her."