Back To Brookes // back to barnes bk2

17: homecoming

     Around the beginning of May, Steve and Bucky left. Things with the Accords were escalating, and Steve could no longer have a passive stance, not with Tony out for all three of us. He had to protect Bucky overall, and I can't say I blamed him. They went back to Germany, leaving me in the states to keep working on the Hydra files. We maintained absolute silence on both ends, not risking any communication being traced. We no longer trusted Tony's "untraceable" devices as things continued to get worse.

I missed Bucky. My cognitive dissonance and I became close friends as I fought between Agent Brookes and Maisie Barnes and Amygdala. I'd spend an hour deciphering one piece of Hydra code, then have to fight through angry tears over not being able to celebrate with Bucky when I finally did. It was stupid. I was stupid. How did I ever function before Bucky?

I missed him like hell. I missed being held, being comforted whenever I needed it. I missed feeling human. Only he made me feel human.

Through the aggravating silence, me going insane and Steve and Bucky doing who knows what God knows where, I continued working. I had thought taking down the last of Hydra would have been a lot more combat and a lot less mapping and translating and deciphering but I kept it up anyway, clinging to the idea that maybe this was better. Safer. I wanted safety, right?

Besides, Steve gave me strict orders to stay out of combat without them. After I mocked him for thinking he was in charge of me, Bucky agreed with him. Though noting how betrayed I looked, Bucky repeated his speech about my safety and safety in numbers and all that. I reluctantly agreed, fingers crossed in my pockets as if that meant anything outside of the military. I was a capable person, they didn't have to know if I stuck my nose in some Hydra business.

So maybe answering Bucky's call while I was in the middle of a fight wasn't the stealthiest idea. Call it reflex.

"Hey I'm a little busy right now," I spoke clearly, my free hand still clenched tightly around the throat of the Hydra agent to my right, weighted boot pinning another guy to the wall.

When it dawned on me that I had just answered my phone while fighting, I pulled back the cell to glare at it for a second. I wasn't paying attention to absolutely anything that was happening around me. Maybe a quarter of my attention was given to this situation. Amygdala and I had a pretty good working relationship going on. Pulling the phone back to my ear, I clutched it between my ear and shoulder and turned to face the guy I was holding. "What? I said I'm busy. I didn't hear a word you said." I reiterated, dropping the lifeless body and turning my attention to the agents running down the marble hallway towards me. Using the man on the left as a shield, I got close enough to someone shooting at me to stab them in the throat. My goal for these guys was death, I wasn't going easy on them. Fuck you, Nazi bitches.

"I said!" Bucky quipped impatiently on the other end. "Where are you? What's going on?"

Damn it was good to hear his voice. "Right," I answered, accepting that me saying I'm busy wasn't going to deter him. He was an attentive husband. "Know how it's Armed Forces Day?"

I blocked a punch coming my way and landed two to the deliverer, one to his jaw and the other to his gut, knocking him down. With my two free hands, I grabbed the guns at my hips and shot the men coming for my sides. I needed Airpods or something.

"Right," Bucky repeated back to me. It was quiet wherever he was, but he still sounded distracted. "And?"

"The capitol holds a ball every Armed Forces Day, right?" I knocked down two more agents dressed in all black and kept running toward the ballroom entrance. "I finally decoded the rest of those files and the most recent-" Using my hip to employ the manual lock, I peered around the corner to see how many were coming at me. People in the ballroom had begun to react to the gunshots and yelling coming from the hallways, and suddenly I felt a lot less put together than I had previously felt. Not only did I have absolutely no plan for this, but I was distracted from the impromptu things I was doing.