Who Am I? » [Stucky]

157. Dogmatism and Indoctrination

"Rogers-Barnes, can I grab you for a second?" Coulson blurted at them, peeking around the door of his office, his face expression his concern.

Steve gave Bucky an obsequious smile to manipulate him around delaying their lunch hour for a bit longer. "Yeah sure - that's fine," Steve confirmed in an agreeable voice and knotted their fingers together with a tiny loving squeeze.

Coulson stood aside with a beguiling false smile reluctantly contorted onto his face - his true feelings radiated by the worry in his eyes; the conduit to his heart.

Bucky and Steve wandered into his spacious office. They couldn't help but note how naturally bright and open it was in comparison to the rest of the facility.

The room was undecorated and placid, the walls made of exposed brick with arched windows cut out of them. His room had a giant screen plastered onto the wall with a map of the world projected onto it; tiny red dots pinged and pulsed - denoting the Hydra bases still in play.

His desk was caked with mountains of sloppily grouped beige files and the now empty cabinet that Bucky and Steve had retrieved from Alaska sat beside the desk - drawers agape like mouths and dangling precariously from the front of the furniture item. Mugs and coffee splash marks decorated the varnish table top and the files and Coulson looked weary.

"What's this about?" Steve spoke boldly, eyes raking over the pieces of paper that had slipped free onto the floor and noticing a small mural carved into the table.

"Partially a debriefing, partially something else..." Coulson insisted, scooping up one clump of papers from his desk. "Obviously I'm going to need the pair of you and Jemma to write up a mission report for Alaska, to entail how on god's green earth that you managed to get captured and what went on. But my main concern is one of the files you retrieved."

Bucky and Steve exchanged an interested glance, idly stood in parade rest.

"Take a seat, you may need it..."

Coulson cumbersomely flopped in his creaky office chair and rubbed his eyes.

"Are you alright, director?" Steve checked, seeing him wince.

"Quite fine, Rogers," he lied with a grimace. He elbowed stacks of files apart to clear the wall of paper between them and flung himself into the desk dependently, barely propping himself up on his arms. "This is what I'm worried about. Now, I've managed to get a rough translation from our ex-not-ex-specialist, Grant Ward, but I'm hoping you, Barnes, will be able to clarify."

A folder scrawled in Cyrillic was nudged across the desk towards him.

"I'm really hoping for once that Grant is lying to us, because this is truth that I hadn't wanted to hear..."

Bucky flipped open the cover and started to trawl through the text, fingers tracing his progress down the page as he read.

"I would've asked Natasha, but this is about someone close to you and thought you deserved to know first. And I thought... Well, by no means do I want to get personal, but I feel the situation calls for it... You'd know more about this type of stuff." Coulson's face was hanging with guilt.

"What does it say?" Steve conferred, leaning in next to Bucky and peering at the alien text.

Bucky's eyes widened as he reached the bottom of the page, then as he turned and a picture fell out, he slammed it shut. He looked up with tearful eyes and chucked the wedge of papers on top of the table with a slap.

"Ask the brainwashed Hydra freak about it... He'll tell you everything you need to know..." Bucky hissed bitterly, wiping a few tears from his eyes. "What did Grant tell you?" Bucky grappled for Steve's hand.