Just a Kid from Brooklyn

No, they didn't, though he knew some of it just from the brief glimpses. All in all, it was a very good life or it sounded like it. Steve was frustrated with not being able to remember but he was doing everything he could to remember.

Including kissing a Guide that wasn't, technically, his.

Steve didn't answer, he apparently didn't need to, because Tony already new what he wanted. Either he was very predictable or the man just knew him that well. He let the Guide show him, trying to memorize it and the feel of it. Even if he never remembered, at least he would know and he could mimic this easy enough.

...and he did, raising his hand to gently grip the man's neck and brushing his lips against his forehead, before pressing them lightly to Tony's mouth. It was obvious he was learning here. It was the only thing he could do.

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Remembering and learning were not all that different, but while Tony was really enjoying being kissed, Steve was getting some rather violent feedback.

The Soldier could feel it and it made him lash out at the pair of agents trying to work with him. Natasha was taking a much needed break, and so there was no one there with the strength to subdue him without shooting him.

It was clean through his thigh. Agony and betrayal shot through him to Steve.

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He could feel that the Soldier was agitated and angry as he kissed Tony, but he needed to do it. What if it made him remember? What if it all clicked into place? His kiss was roughly and violently disturbed.

Steve shoved away from Tony, snarling and throwing himself hard enough against the door that there was a sizable dent in it. He might not expressly want his Guide but the instinct to protect him was still there. They were still connected. He knew the burn of a gunshot. The Soldier was being harmed. He wouldn't stand for it.

He slammed against the door again with another snarl. He was probably hurting himself but it didn't matter to him. Instincts demanded he protect his Guide. The one he was bonded to and right now, that was the Soldier.

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Tony was shocked. The pizza was overturned and the soda seeped into the mattress and the floor. The Guide stood back away from the freaking out Sentinel and a voice broke through on the loud speaker. "Stand down, Csptain Rogers!"

He probably couldn't. Hurting his Guide and not allowing him to get to him? Steve was going to berserk out. And Tony was trapped inside with him.

"Stand down and we'll bring you to him!" It was the best they could do and Tony felt every inch of himself weaken before he stepped up to the Sentinel trying to and succeeding to punch his way out of the room.

Tony just had to lay hands on him and he could knock him out.

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He completely and entirely ignored the voice through the speaker. He wasn't going to stand down when his Guide was in danger and definitely wasn't going to trust them to bring him to him intact. Who knew what they might do to him in the meantime? No, he needed to help his Guide and now.

Luckily for Tony, his attention was focused on the door and removing it from its hinges. He was succeeding too. He could feel the door giving and the bones in his hand might have too, just a little, but it was negligible to a bullet.

Behind him, Tony didn't register as a threat. He was a Guide and he was supposed to be Steve's. His scent was on the Sentinel so it was relatively easy for the man's hands to find skin. He jerked, dismayed, his eyes betrayed when he turned toward Tony and wobbled before collapsing.

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Tony kept in his anguish, tilting his head back as if his tears could stay locked forever inside of his skull without expression. He blinked for good measure and then swallowed. Doing that had been exhausting and Tony felt himself swaying.

"He's neutralized. Get him to his... Guide." He could feel his lashes grow wet and he willed himself not to think about it. "Quickly. He won't be out for long."

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They moved quickly once Tony told them it was clear. Bucky was also neutralized though his was a little more violent than Steve's. They took the man to yet another tiny room they set up. They bandaged his hand and put it in a brace. It would heal quickly but he would need the support until it did.

His Guide was on a bed and he was dumped on a separate one. Everyone else was immediately pulled out of the room and they reinforced the door. They set to work repairing the one Steve nearly destroyed as well. All and all, he was out for twenty minutes and once his eyes opened, he was immediately on his feet.

He immediately honed in on the Soldier and shifted to inspect the bandages over his wound. Steve pressed his lips together and reached out to rest his hand on the man's forehead, feeling for fever. He would really prefer his Guide be awake but he wasn't dead so that was reassuring to his Sentinel instincts.

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Tony watched the gentle care of the Captain to his Soldier and he felt the kiss that had been so rudely stolen from him burn like fire on his lips. Steve was not capable of being his again, which felt...wrong. It felt as if he had grown impoverished and yet there was nothing let from him to do but accept it.

No one touched the Guide. No one tried to pull him out of his melancholy. And no one stopped him when he decided to leave.

In the room with the Captain, the Soldier eventually opened his eyes. Sunken in blue stretched the distance of hiss Captain's face and settled upon his lips. "I could feel it," he confessed. "It...hurt. I don't remember what pain was like."

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All of it felt wrong to Steve. On one hand, Tony made his heart light. He was drawn to the man like a moth to a flame. He would, again and again, pick the man over his Guide. He stood by that desire. Even now, staring down at the Soldier. He cared for him, as much as he could, but even then he thought of Tony. There was just something about him. He didn't understand it. Why couldn't he be content with the Soldier?

It was a relief to see the Guide finally wake up and the Captain slumped slightly at the words, sitting heavily in a chair. He was unhappy even if he didn't have the words to express it. A little guilty too, but that only added to the feeling. What could he do? Nothing. Not without the Soldier's consent and he doubted he would get it.

"I was supposed to bond him," Steve said. "I still feel it."

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Bucky was finding it harder and harder to cling to his programming. He had been clipped from it before and the Avengers knew how to do it again. It left him raw and aching when Steve, his Captain, said those words.

He was on heavy pain killers. The morphine had the opposite effect on his mind, letting the base personality, letting Bucky, come out again. They had given him enough to kill a horse because of his physiology.

"But you're bonded to me," Bucky whispered. "It feels like it should have always been me. They made me for you."

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He could feel the ache. The bond was a constant presence even if Steve didn't think he wanted it; he couldn't escape it either.

"So they could use us against each other," Steve said quietly, because he remembered, quite clearly, Hydra's threats against his Guide. "So they could keep me from Tony. So they could ruin everything."

Okay, so the last part wasn't as quiet as he intended but Steve was angry. He was allowed to be now. Hydra took everything from him. Everything.

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Bucky turned away from his Captain. The Soldier felt adrift and alone. There was only one person in the world a Guide was suppose to need and though he was not born a Guide, it was his role.

What was he suppose to do when that one person didn't want him?

Their bond was stronger than most because it was filtered out in two ways. Guide to Sentinel. Sentinel to Guide. It made this blow far worse.

"Forgive me then for being an instrument of ruin, Captain," Bucky told his pillow. He had never felt so alone in his life and his bondmate was standing right there.

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Why couldn't he just accept and embrace the fact that he was already bonded? Here was a willing Guide, one that was already his, and every fiber of his being still wanted a different one.

He wanted Tony even before he understood it; it was why Hydra made him a target. He affected Steve in ways that shouldn't be possible when he was already bonded. He didn't pretend to understand it.

The Captain was still struggling with his base personality. It was hard to be Steve Rogers after everything that had happened to him. He was trying but it only made him more depressed. The complete and utter loneliness coming from his Guide only made him feel worse.

"I don't blame you," he murmured and it was true. "We're both victims. I just... don't know what to do."

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"Sever the bond." Happiness was not something that Bucky remembered but he was slowly becoming uncomfortably equated with misery. Having his Sentinel actively line for another was tearing him open and Bucky wanted it to stop.

Not even the gunshot wound hurt as much as this truly did.

"If you don't want me, you don't have to have me, Captain."

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"It's not that easy," Steve muttered, his blue eyes sharp on Bucky. It was what he wanted but he couldn't kill the man. Even the Captain wasn't that cruel and he was becoming Steve Rogers more and more the longer they were away from Hydra. "It could kill you. According to them, it probably will. They don't know for sure but the chance you survive is low. I... I can't do that."

Was suffering the better option? Torturing the man with his constant pining? He didn't know. He didn't think there was a right answer.

He sighed heavily, "They aren't even sure I would survive."

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Putting a hand to the covered wound on his leg, Bucky sat up slowly and watched the Captain with such strange heartbreak in his eyes. It mirrored Tony's now, strangely enough.

"Do it and send me back to HYDRA. I was something-- I use to be something before you." That was true, if cruel. Bucky didn't remember his life before the Captain. He just knew that everything hurt now.

He wanted to forget again and live as just the Soldier.

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"I won't," he refused, shaking his head, because he didn't exactly know SHIELD but he knew Hydra was worse. He remembered the pain of the wipes. He knew what they made the two of them do over course of six months. "I can't. I don't... I don't remember a lot, but we were friends, before. I cared about you. I still do. I won't send you back to them."

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"I think you should get out." This wasn't entirely Bucky. It wasn't the soldier either. The simple truth was that there wasn't any truth left. He'd been a Sentinel at birth. Steve had been a Guide, though his scent had been so minuscule that it was any wonder Bucky had ever noticed it.

But it had started back in that alley. It had been more than friendship for Bucky but he wasn't stupid enough to make it otherwise.

He had little flashes of that. Of laying on the floor and laughing-- he wanted to smash it.

"Whenever you say that you feel-- You're killing me already, in thought if not deed. So just get out."

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The words, while reasonable and not unexpected, cut into him like a knife. He might not want it but instinct told him this was still his Guide. He was hurting them both this way. Steve deserved it; Bucky didn't. The Sentinel could scream and cry, all at the same time.

"I'm sorry," he said instead and he was, even if the inflection wasn't quite there yet. He stood and moved for the door, dejected and defeated. He wanted his life back. The happy one that Tony kept showing him. He didn't want this miserable excuse for existence.

He knocked on the door because he wouldn't stay if the Guide didn't want him here, "Take me back to my box."

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Tony didn't come by. Tony wasn't waiting. No one visited the Captain at all, though parts of the bond between himself and Bucky tugged from time to time as the Soldier went through rehabilitation, physically and mentally.

Natasha was with him almost exclusively, speaking in Russian to calm him and in English again to bring him back to the present.

He was the one that brought up the chemical bond dissolver a few days later and she was the one to come to Steve.

"He wants to separate," she told her captain and her friend. "It's all he talks about."

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He asked and waited, there was nothing else he could do. They played anything he asked for on the screen and slowly he recalled things but with no one here to really point him in the right direction, he wasn't improving as quickly as he could be.

Of course, part of the time he spent just staring at the wall so that wasn't helping either. Why wouldn't Tony visit him? Helping him? He didn't understand.

Steve was quiet as Natasha offered him Bucky's request and he said, "So long as he doesn't go back to them, I'll do it."

He might have been the one to bring it up but he wasn't doing it if it led the man back to Hydra.

"Where's Tony?" he asked again. Surely she would have an answer?

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Natasha didn't look uncomfortable. Her face never seemed to change. "He went home after you beat the door down." There was no reason at all to lie. Not to the Captain. "You can't really blame him there can you?"

How many times did Tony have to hurt? He'd spent so long searching for Steve... Too long. And now this was all that was left.

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No, he couldn't blame him for wanting to escape from a Sentinel that was nearly berserking to get to a Guide that wasn't him. However, soon that wasn't going to be true.

"It won't happen once the bond is dissolved," Steve said, eyes on her. He couldn't read her. He wasn't sure he wanted to. "He'll want to know when it's done."

Right? He was doing it for him. He wanted Tony. It was the entire problem. "I want to talk to him."

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"I'll call him." Natasha was about to leave when she paused and the pulled a phone from her incredibly tight jeans and typed in Stark's number before she handed it over to Steve. "You talk."

Tony hadn't been planning on answering but when JARVIS told him that Romanoff was ringing him. That could mean a problem and Tony couldn't risk it.

So he answered. "Yeah?"

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