The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 37

Dresden, Germany

Spring 2016

It was about as nondescript a location as they came. Honestly? Had Nadine not led them in through the back of the supposedly abandoned storefront, Steve never would've pegged it for anything but. From the outside, the two-story building looked like it hadn't been entered much less had a resident in years.

But of course, that was the intent.

Inside was another matter.

What looked like boarded and newspapered windows from the outside were actually meticulously blacked out from the inside, the customer entrance completely blocked and secured, making it quite clear that the building's purpose no longer lay in retail. While there was a thin coating of dust on most surfaces, it was obviously well upkept, with lights blinking immediately to life when Nadine flicked the breaker in the back room once she'd mollified her security system with the appropriate iris-scan and passcode.

Upstairs was no different. The same plain but clean functional tiles as the store downstairs covered the floors from one end of the common area into the small kitchenette. And presumably, back through a narrow hallway into what had once been a private office and additional storage, the space now likely redone to include at least one bedroom, a washroom and a workroom of sorts, if he knew Nadine.

Sure enough, as he, Sam and Bucky had filed in, she had been gesturing around and informing them of the general layout—confirming Steve's suspicions—even as she deposited her rifle case and duffle on the counter in the kitchenette.

"Make yourselves at home," she'd finished with a trace of a wry smile. Steve had huffed out a small laugh as Sam at once deposited his gear next to one of the pair of couches in the common area, proceeding to pace the perimeter of the room, eying the blacked out windows with a mix of curiosity and assessment. Similarly, Bucky hadn't moved from his position near the door until he'd passed a critical look around the entire space. Steve bit back a sigh, hating that such precautions had become such a crucial part of their lives.

Especially Bucky's. Even as he stepped into the room, the space evidently passing muster, the tension never quite left his frame, his metal hand unconsciously flexing as he edged toward the pair of couches.

God, the kind of life he must have been living. It left a physical ache in Steve's chest just imagining what Bucky must have been through in the last two years alone. There was no forgetting the near squalor of the defunct safehouse they had tracked him to, the air of the place musty and stale, the neglect permeating the dark room seeming to still cling to Steve's skin even hours later at the mere memory. And that paled in comparison to the horrors Steve suspected his best friend had been subjected to during his time under HYDRA's control.

Then to even contemplate what he had endured since falling off that godforsaken train all those decades before?

Even back in DC when Steve had made the decision to go after Bucky, he hadn't been naive enough to think that, underneath the programming of the Winter Soldier, the Bucky he'd known would just be waiting to be freed. He'd clung to the hope that some of his best friend had survived—he'd known, knowing how strong Bucky was that he was still in there somewhere—but he'd held no illusions that he would escape HYDRA's hold on his mind unscathed. He knew that the Bucky he'd been searching for, that he was fighting to save, would be different from the Bucky he'd failed to save in Austria.

No one could experience the torments, the crimes, that Bucky undoubtedly had seen—had been forced to commit—unchanged, without psychological scars that would never fade.

Natasha hadn't. Nadine certainly hadn't. The two sisters spies were similarly haunted by their pasts, and Steve suspected that, in many ways, they had endured many of the same horrors that Bucky had.