You Will Remember Me

The Bill Comes Due

SS

Sam felt Bucky's hand go slack and watched his eyes flutter shut. As his breathing evened out, so did his heart beat.

"Miss Summers, why don't you head back up to your floor? We'll have JARVIS call you when we're done." Bruce suggested gently. Behind him other people in scrubs were setting up to tube Bucky, and Sam didn't particularly want to see that.

"Just promise you'll let me know when he's done so I can be here when he wakes up." She said, staring at his unconscious body. Even conked out he looked tense.

"I promise." He returned.

"Don't worry, Frosty. He's gonna be fine." Tony reassured.

"Thanks, guys." Sam said, giving both of them a sad smile. She couldn't see beneath the mask, but by his crinkled eyes, she could tell Tony was smiling.

She headed back to her shared floor with Steve, finding him back from his debriefing down at the new super secret S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters.

"Hey." He greeted. He was sitting on the couch, watching (surprisingly) something other than post-World War II documentaries. Which, really, she couldn't give him hell about. The man had been frozen for seventy years.

"Hey." Sam returned, plopping down next to him after grabbing an energy drink from the fridge; it was already 5 in the evening, it was going to be a very long night.

"He in?" Steve asked.

"Yep. Bruce and Tony just sent me back up, actually. They're gonna call me when he's done." She replied, taking a drink.

Steve nodded in response.

"So how was the debriefing thing? What did Fury have to say about..." She paused, trying to figure out how to word it. "All this?"

It was the best way to put it.

"Well, he's not holding a grudge against you or Bucky because of the whole brainwashing thing, if that's what you're wondering."

Sam gave a small sigh of relief. She soon found that her relief was short lived, as Steve added something to it.

"However, the authorities...and the public...are calling for a hearing." Steve said carefully.

"For me and Bucky?!" She asked, staring at him wide-eyed.

"They're not exactly happy with you since they've seen you walking around with him, but so far just for Bucky. They're accusing him of all the crimes he committed while under HYDRA's control."

"That's bullshit, it wasn't his fault! Don't they know that?!" Sam exclaimed.

"I've already tried that, Sam, they don't care. We have to get him to D.C. by next week, otherwise they're taking him into police custody." Steve said quietly. "They want him to turn himself in."

Sam's stomach sank. Bucky didn't deserve to go through that. He didn't deserve to be put through that stress and discrimination after everything he'd already been through.

"And what if they find him guilty?" Sam whispered, holding back tears. They were more out of rage than anything.

Steve looked down and didn't answer.

"Steve?" She pressed.

"So far, one of two things. They either put him in jail for the rest of his life, or..."

He didn't even have to finish the sentence for her to know what that meant.

"Oh god," she murmured.

"Look, I'm gonna talk to Stark, see if he knows somebody we can hire to be Bucky's lawyer. There's a new firm that opened up a while back, I don't remember the names, but they've had high success rates. I've heard the guy's convincing." Steve said. He took a swig from a dark bottle; Sam hadn't noticed the other empty bottles beside the couch otherwise she would've known something was wrong. Steve never drank that much, despite his inability to get drunk.

Sam heaved a sigh and relaxed back into the cushions.

"How are we gonna tell him?" She asked, blankly staring at the TV.

"We'll give him a day or so to recover. Then we tell him." Steve answered, doing the same. "We do it together." He decided, he and Sam meeting each other's gaze.

"We can't let anything happen to him." She said.

"We're gonna get him through this." Steve replied, taking her hand in his. "I love him just as much as you do, y'know. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

Eight hours passed and they still had no word from Stark or Banner, and both were beginning to worry.

Sam had drank energy drinks of various kinds (and stolen one or two bottles from Steve's stash) by then, mostly because it helped her with the edginess. While her metabolism was heightened by the serum it still wasn't quite as fast as the others and allowed her to get drunk, albeit it would still take much more than a normal person to get there. Besides, she was never a lightweight to begin with.

Steve passed the time sketching while Sam found a book from their library and read. Finally, at 2:35 in the morning, Tony gave them an update.

"Hey, Frosty, Capsicle, your buddy's out of surgery. Everything's fine, don't worry, but it may be a while before he wakes up. His arm's gonna be really sensitive, so don't bump it or do anything to make him want to strangle you." He said over the intercom. Sam and Steve both let out a sigh of relief.

"Guess that's our cue." The former said, pulling on the sweatshirt Bucky had gotten her at the Smithsonian. They kept it damn near freezing in the lab-turned-surgery wing. Steve slung a jacket over his shoulder and followed suit.

—•—•—•—•—

a/n:
So I'm kinda on the fence about this. I wrote the majority of this chapter two years ago (more or less) when I was still planning on continuing into a third book which was gonna be centered around the trial. I could either a) kinda gloss over the whole thing and they live happily ever after, or b) do what I was originally gonna do and make the trial a huge-ass deal. It's up to you guys, really, so let me know what you think! Much love ❤️

By the way, if you happen to be reading this, thank you Fayth. I know you put your time into making the cover years ago and I'm so sorry I'm not going to be able to use it (and I'm sorry you had to put up with teenager me being awkward as hell). Life kinda...happened...in not the best of ways.