Bucky stormed back into the cabin, causing everyone inside to snap their heads round to him.

"What did you find Icicle?" Stark said, his humorous smirk dropping from his face when Bucky threw the broken piece of wood displaying half of the Hydra symbol onto the coffee table. The room fell silent.

Tony clenched his jaw.

"What locations do we have?" Bucky said, his voice dangerously low, and outwardly angry. No one responded to him. "What. Locations." He repeated.

"One on the South Coast, another in Berlin, there's a couple in -" Nat started to say before Bucky grabbed one of the files scattered around and marched straight back out the house.

"Bucky you can't just march over there without a plan!" Steve called, following after him. "Bucky!"

Bucky whipped round to him, holding the file up.

"The plan is to fucking find her. We've been here for days," Bucky said. "No closer to working out which of these bases are active, but they would have taken her to one of them. I'm going to find out."

"Then wait for us to organise what-"

"She's gone! They took her Steve. You and Tony can sit and debate the pros and cons of shit, I'm going!"

"You don't think I want to find her as well, Barnes?!" Came Tony's yell, and the pair looked up to see him walking from the house towards them. "You're not the only one that's angry."

"Well I'm the only one moving so-"

"Okay, Buck, okay," Steve said when he saw his friend glare at Stark. "We'll go. We will. But you'll need weapons first." Bucky breathed as he processed Steve's words, then nodded, and headed to the house to grab a bag.

Over the next week, the team moved to a new safehouse, and then hit four prospective Hydra bases. Each one turned up nothing, as though Hydra had hired a skeleton crew just to try and beat their asses, and tease them that they were no closer to finding you. The others started getting wary of Bucky after the third base. Every unsuccessful mission made him angrier.

Every unsuccessful mission made him more concerned about you.

He was getting more and more withdrawn with each day that passed, more sucked into his spiralling thoughts. More temperamental.

He was lashing out at Tony, for his tracking bracelet not working for you, even though he knew Hydra would have disarmed it as soon as they took it. He was lashing out at Steve and Sam everytime the Hydra bases came up empty, but he knew that wasn't their fault. He even (almost) lashed out at Nat when he'd got shot at on one base, when she was meant to be covering him, until he realised that she was taking a hit from another agent at the time.

The fifth base was their last identified base. If this turned up empty, then it would take them at least another week to locate another one, and it scared Bucky. It scared him that the longer you were gone, the less likely it would be that he'd get you back.

So here they were, taking two quinjets to a base on the Canadian border, the air tense and awkward in the one that Bucky was in, just as it had been for the last four missions. The strategy was the same; Tony and Rhodey as aerial support, identifying any heat signatures, possible routes to underground structures, Steve and Sam going in from the North, Nat and Bucky from the East, Wanda and Clint from the South, and Vision and Banner from the West. The rest of the team probably had finer details mapped out, but Bucky's was simple - punch his way through the enemies until he found you.

And that's exactly what he did. He punched and shot his way through three levels of agents with Nat following behind him. Tony's voice had come through the comms two minutes earlier that there was a room four levels under the surface that had two heat signatures, one moving and one not.

Bucky let himself fall under the hope that it was you.

He reached the second to last underground level ahead of Nat, and it was silent. Completely silent. He tightened his grip on his gun, his eyes darting down the hallway as he slowly stepped forward. He got halfway down the corridor, keeping his breathing even and inaudible, his footsteps stealthy as he carefully placed his feet in front of each other at a steady pace.

There was a door on his left. He cautiously moved over to it, his hand reaching out for the handle, when there was a voice suddenly echoing around him.

"We've looked for her for years. Who would have thought that the almighty Luka would be right under the guard of our own Winter Soldier?"

Bucky looked around the hallway with narrowed eyes, trying to figure out where the voice came from, but all he could see was the door on his left and the door at the end of the hallway. He put his hand on the door handle he was already reaching for.

"That's the wrong door Sergeant Barnes, unless you want to leave here empty handed, again?"

He clenched his jaw, putting his hand back onto his gun and moving towards the other door. The voice didn't echo as he walked forwards, nor did it speak when Bucky reached for the door handle. That sounded like you were here. He needed to see if you were here.

As soon as he touched it though, the voice started again.

Желание

Fuck.

Ржавый

Семнадцать

"What is this?" He spat, as he squeezed his eyes shut.

Рассвет

Печь

Девять

He shouted out for the voice to stop.

Доброкачественный

Возвращение на род-

He suddenly spun around and grabbed the agent sneaking up behind up by the throat in a chokehold, his arm tightening around his neck. The agent wheezed in his hold.

"You think I'd come back if those words still worked?" Bucky spat in the agent's ear. He squeezed his arm tighter.

"You..won't find her if you...kill me.." The agent stuttered out. Bucky thought for a moment, then, with a tense jaw, he released the agent who scrambled to stand, allowing Bucky to have a proper look at him.

He was dressed differently than the others, smarter, less dirty, less combative. He had no obvious weapons on him either - Bucky could tell there was a small gun under his shirt by his hip, one knife in his boot and one up his sleeve. He was just standing in front of Bucky, watching him observe him with a weirdly creepy smile.

Bucky went to press his comms, but the agent held up a finger.

"I wouldn't do that either. You come alone if you want to see your little girlfriend." He said, making Bucky's blood boil. He lowered his hand.

"Take me to her now." He ordered the agent. He didn't trust him. It was probably a ploy to get Bucky captured as well as you, but he had to find out if you were really here. He could find a way out after.

The agent's weird smile grew, and he approached the door, opening it swiftly and leading Bucky down a set of steel stairs. Bucky kept his eyes up, looking over the new environment, one hand tight on his gun by his side, and the other subtly reaching up to his wrist and double tapping his bracelet.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was a large space with only one door ahead. Bucky would have thought it was just like any other door he'd seen in this place, but then he noticed the fingerprint scanner. The others didn't have that. ID scanners, sure, but this was the fingerprint scanner that he'd seen. Bucky waited, impatiently, for the guy to press his hand to the pad, for the door to click open, then for him to gesture Bucky through. Bucky rushed in to what appeared to be a large room, dim lighting, and in one corner -

"Luka!" He yelled before running over. You were shackled to a chair, with thick metal cuffs around your wrists, ankles and neck, your head hung forward. He could barely hear you breathing. He yanked on the cuffs, but they didn't budge. What they did do was shock him slightly, making him rip his hands away.

He heard the door lock mechanically behind him.

"Here is your precious goddess," Came the echoing speaker voice again. "She's locked in with specially engineered tele-magnetic cuffs that are slowly taking her powers away. And you're locked in with 12 foot thick walls that block any signals coming in or out. No one will ever find you two down here. Good luck Soldat."