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[make_it_hurt]

It hurts. He hurts. Ste-- the target was there. A few feet away. But the Soldier can't even stand. He's curled on his side, gasping for air around the pain in his gut, his shoulder, his entire body. 

But one of his handlers would come for him. This was where he was supposed to meet them, if something went wrong. They were supposed to be here, so all he had to do was wait. 

But in the mean time, he was dying. The schedule had been burned into his body and mind - after too long out of the ice, he'd start to break down. He was already remembering. He <i>knew</i> the man still unconscious on the floor a ways away. He knew him in a way that made the soldier fear his handler's retribution. He flinched from a phantom slap, then shuddered out a breath into the concrete. 

They gave him the shots, and the shots burned, but they made everything else... less. This is too much. His hands curl into fists, then open, then close again in a fistful of hair. 

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[make_it_hurt]

"Safe," he mumbled into the ground. "They'll come for me." And he was desperately hopeful for that. For the pain to ease, for them to put his shoulder back into place. He hated cryo, but it was better than this all-over pain. He wasn't sure how long it'd been, but it had been long enough. A day, or maybe two, but it was long enough that whatever they put in him to keep his heart from hurting was wearing off.

He shuddered again, struggling for breath, but still made no attempt to even start to move.

[doesntrunaway]

That was the answer he'd been expecting, but still not the one he wanted to hear, "You know we can't let that happen, Buck." He said, trying to get to his feet and only managing to struggle partway up before falling back again, practically blinded with pain, because even just that amount of torque and pressure against that badly rent stab wound in his thigh and what had narrowly avoided being a gut shot had been enough to remind him on no uncertain terms, that those weren't the kind of injuries one could just walk off.

What he finally managed to say once he could make his voice work again for anything other than rough breathing that bordered on an actual whimper was: "If they're coming for you, it's not safe."

[make_it_hurt]

"I need them to... It hurts..." But he hadn't sent any sort of message, hadn't been able to remember the codes - they hadn't given them to him, all he knew was that he had to come here for retrieval.

And although Bucky hadn't even looked around, hadn't thought about where he was going, this safehouse looked like it hadn't been used in a long time. The furniture and counters were thick with dust, except where Bucky had dragged Steve in and where he was currently lying. The paint was starting to peel and everything looked outdated.

[doesntrunaway]

"We both," He grit his teeth, trying to catch his breath, frustrated to be wheezing so easily again, "We both need a medic, I know. But not one of Hydra's."

For the time being, that was the only thing he could focus on, that catch 21 of needing to get out before backup arrived, but needing backup to be able to get out, that circular thought, along with the pain, was making him dizzy.

[make_it_hurt]

"I need..." He groans, curling his left arm around his head. "Maintenance... not medical..." He needs them to make his body work again, like it should. To make the pain in it go away, to clear the fog making it hard to think.

[doesntrunaway]

He didn't like the sound of that, not even a little, but he couldn't quite wrap his brain around an actual protest.

It took him two tries, but he managed to ask: "When did you call them?" Because if Bucky had brought them here for pickup, that meant he'd have had contact with someone. At least, that's what made the most sense.

[make_it_hurt]

"Didn't... can't, no codes." But this was the safehouse he was supposed to return to... At least, it was the only safehouse he could remember being told to return to. That that would be a problem had yet to occur to him - if indeed it ever would. This was his designated pickup location, they would come for him here.

[doesntrunaway]

That was enough to have some of the tension riding Steve's shoulders lessening. It didn't go away completely, but it did ease considerably, if he hadn't called out that meant that Hydra would just have to come looking on their own when they got around to it.

Of course, that could be any time, but at least it wasn't so immediate, which he could definitely be thankful for. Of course, the pain he was still under made it hard to think any further than that moment of silent gratitude, even though he knew they needed a real plan if they were going to get out of this in one piece, and it wasn't as if he had any way of contacting his people either.

[make_it_hurt]

By the time they'd realized Steve's tracker in his suit was still going and had traced it to an old, condemed building in a rough part of DC, it had been almost six hours since the events at the triskelion.

Whoever had taken Steve hadn't bothered to even try to disable it, though, so if HYDRA had snagged him, Sam could be walking into a trap.

They were hedging their bets that HYDRA was too busy elsewhere to worry about Steve, though how he'd ended up here was anybody's guess. They were pretty far from the river and if Steve had gotten here under his own power, why not walk towards the ambulances and help?

Sam made his way into the building - the door had been broken open, recently, and there were both drag marks and boot prints in the thick dust, heading towards a back room. The building hadn't been touched in a long time, until recently. If there was more than two people here - Steve and whoever had brought him here.

"Steve?" he called, well aware that the Winter Solider - James Barnes - could be here. Steve could be dead, killed by the Winter Soldier, and Sam could be walking into death himself. "Steve, you there?"

[doesntrunaway]

Those six hours had seemed simultaneously like days -even weeks- and like a matter of minutes, given as how Steve was in and out of delirious, nightmare-riddled sleep the whole time, trying to stay alert only exhausted him further and sent him off to sleep again for minutes or hours or what felt like days at a time.

It was also why he didn't respond to the voice right away, not sure if it was something he was actually hearing or if it was the lingering remnants of a fever dream, and it was only the fact that it persisted even despite his having levered himself around to sit again, gritting his teeth against the pain and the way it made his vision swim, that he responded: "Yeah. Yeah, we're here."

[make_it_hurt]

Steve sounded rough, to put it mildly. It didn't take a pararescue like Sam to hear it. But still. "I'm going to come in, I hope your friend doesn't try to shoot me."

Good thing he'd insisted on bringing even a small med kit with him. But he hadn't been expecting to walk around the corner and see what he saw. Steve, sitting up, bloody and clutching his side and lying not ten feet away, very still and definitely watching his every movement... the Winter Soldier.

He was lying in his side, curled into a ball, and made no move to try to sit up or reach for a weapon when Sam approached.

"We need to get you to the hospital, Steve."

There was something about the Soldier that seemed off, though. He was trembling, a little, all over, and wasn't looking directly at Sam or Steve, but rather had his attention focused on the door he'd come through.

Something about the Soldier made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was eerily familiar to the way he felt when meeting an unbonded Guide the first time, but the Soldier was definitely not actually a Guide...

"Lay back, I'll get you something for the pain. Maria, we're going to need medical."

"Everybody's busy, but I'm sure an ambulance will come."

[doesntrunaway]

Steve was already shaking his head even as Sam suggested a hospital, "No. We can't." His ears were ringing and he couldn't make them stop, and even despite the fact that his vision had narrowed down to barely anything, as he resisted Sam's attempts to get him to lay down again, he still forced himself to get the rest of the statement out: "They'll find him at a hospital. We can't," He grit his teeth over the fresh wave of nausea, one that he wasn't entirely sure was his own, "We can't let that happen."

Granted, he didn't really know what would stop Hydra from finding Bucky no matter where they took him, but that was something he was going to worry about when he could actually concentrate and had enough concentration to at least start with a plan.

[make_it_hurt]

"Okay, alright, we won't, just lay back." Sam really wanted Steve to lay down. He had at least two bullet holes in him that Sam could see, and super soldier healing or not, it would still take time. At least he hadn't bled out, but it was a minor miracle considering the condition he was still in.

And honestly, Sam didn't know if he cared if Hydra found Barnes or not. The man was responsible for a lot of murder, including attempted murder of not only himself and Nat, but also Steve, his ostensible best friend. "You're full of holes that aren't supposed to be there, you need to lay down."

"Should I still call an ambulance?" Maria sounded doubtful about calling it off, but Sam turned to look at Barnes for another moment - still looking at the doorway, still rubbing the wrong way across Sam's senses - before returning to Steve.

"No, hold off. For now, at least. He's healing himself pretty quickly. I might need your help, though. Barnes is here."

And it was pretty clear that something was wrong with him. He was lying on his left side, on the metal arm, metal hand curled around his right shoulder. His face was tense, teeth gritted.

"Alright, I'll be there." She started getting up and moving around her things, probably putting on body armor and getting a gun.

Sam, meanwhile, angled himself so he could keep an eye on Barnes even as he started on Steve, giving him a very hefty dose of a painkiller.

The Soldier, at the same time, was finding himself both more aware and less. He was trembling, his entire body screaming like it was on fire, like he'd just come out of the ice and was being moved too quickly.

But every time he looked at one of his unofficial targets - the black man, the one that had had the wings he'd ripped off with his left hand - he felt himself calm. It was just a little bit easier to breathe, the pain faded, his head cleared.

"Hey, Steve, your friend doesn't happen to be a Guide, does he?" The man asked Steve. He was tense, his head turned so he could watch the Soldier and the Soldier could watch him.

[doesntrunaway]

The unexpectedness of that question was what finally got Steve to lay back, surprised and no longer resisting Sam's efforts.

His brow furrowed, turning his head to blink over at Bucky, finally shaking his head, "I don't know. He's not supposed to be? He didn't used to be." But then, Steve hadn't really been a Sentinel before the Serum either, and with everything else that Hydra had done, Steve wouldn't put it past them to have tried altering what Bucky was in an attempt to make him more loyal.

Or more dependent on them, but he wasn't letting himself think about that one too hard because that one just made him angry all over again and he couldn't do that right now, either.

[make_it_hurt]

"Alright, because he sure feels like a Guide to me." The longer he was sitting here, the more his senses became sure that Barnes was maybe, possibly a Guide. Kind of in the same way that Steve was maybe, possibly a Sentinel.

But Steve's injuries were more important at the moment. He was busy cutting open his clothing. Steve had been shot twice, and knifed, and there was plenty of blunt trauma from what had to be a slugfest with Barnes, but he was already starting to heal. He reached behind Steve to check for exit wounds, and was glad they were both through and through. No need to go fishing for the bullet, but it was Steve's healing that had saved him from bleeding out.

"We need to clean your wounds." Hopefully Steve didn't have a perforated intestine, since he was insisting on no hospital.

[doesntrunaway]

"Yeah. Better do that before the painkillers wear off." Steve knew that his metabolism was dangerously high at times, especially when it came to medications, and he didn't relish the thought of having those wounds irrigated without the painkiller.

It was either the pain or the painkillers or some combination of the two that had him continuing: "I don't think they would have let him enlist if he was a Guide. Not then." There were some historians he knew that suggested Bucky hadn't enlisted but had been conscripted, but that was something else Steve hadn't let himself think too deeply about before.

[make_it_hurt]

Sam got to work on Steve's gunshots first. As he worked, Maria came in, her own gun in hand. She stared at Barnes for a moment while he stared back, but she holstered her sidearm after a moment and came to help Sam, also keeping one eye on Barnes as she did so.

"Well, that's one thing that hasn't changed. Riley had a hell of a time enlisting. Had to do medical, and then pararescue, because they didn't want to put him into potential firefights."

They hadn't been Bonded. They'd been close, but Riley could do his work better as a Guide without Sam there interfering. Maybe someday they could have, but it had been a pipe dream when Riley had been shot down. Part of Sam was glad they hadn't been a Pair then, because he probably wouldn't have survived Riley's death.

Sam leaned forward to look at the wound he was working on more closely, shining a pen light down into it. It just looked like blood, no cloth, no bullet, none of the contents of his intestines. "You're damn lucky, Steve. Let's check the other and hope you're still lucky."

[doesntrunaway]

He barked something that might have been a laugh under other circumstances, just shaking his head and managing not to grind his teeth, "Yeah. Lucky." He knew he was, at least to some degree, lucky he was still alive, and he'd be even luckier if he didn't go into shock or sepsis or worse from having landed in the Potomac, let alone whatever else he'd been dragged or carried through to get to where they were now.

He was also trying to keep an eye on Bucky, mostly just to reassure himself that it really was Bucky there and not the blank emotionlessness that had been the Winter Soldier, had to convince himself this wasn't some elaborate trap.

[make_it_hurt]

"If you start getting worse, I don't care if you're a super soldier or not, I'm taking you to the hospital." Barnes would keep. Whatever reluctance Steve had had to hurt Barnes had very obviously not been reciprocated.

"There any beds in this place?" He asked, this time to Barnes, whose whole body jerked when Sam spoke to him, his head lifting.

"Yes," he started, then paused to swallow. Everything hurt so much still. His right arm was starting to go numb, but the fingers of his left were starting to move smoothly again.

"I'll set your shoulder as soon as I'm done here," Sam told him, as much as he wanted to just leave Barnes there and not get within range of that metal arm.

Satisfied that neither of Steve's bullet holes were going to kill him in the immediate future, Sam set to work bandaging him - the wounds needed to drain so he left them open, but layered on gauze thickly. While he worked, Maria got up, "I'll see about a bed for him," and headed off into the rest of the safe house.

[doesntrunaway]

Even injured like he was, and half-delirious, Steve knew better than to argue that point. Which wasn't to say that he wouldn't argue if it came to that, knowing better than to take Bucky anywhere that he might be seen, especially a crowded hospital, but for the time being, he just nodded, "Okay, okay fine."

He turned his head a little to catch Bucky's eyes again, "Bucky, Sam here's pararescue. Medic. He knows what he's doing, just, just let him take care of your arm, please. He's trying to help."